Vettel tops final day at Jerez

Sebastian Vettel continued the Red Bull stable's run of fastest testing times by leading the final day at Jerez on Wednesday

After his teammate Sebastien Buemi - substituting for the injured Mark Webber - had set the pace earlier in the week, today Vettel moved to the head of the times with a 1:16.617 lap, three tenths of a second quicker than the Swiss Toro Rosso candidate as they conducted set-up work with next year's slick Bridgestones.

Having been rapid throughout the post-season tests, Vettel reckoned his team were ending 2008 in good shape.

"We've had pretty smooth running at this test and have completed a lot of mileage before the end of the year," he said. "I think we've done everything we could here, learning about the tyres and next year's regulations and hopefully we will start next year with a car strong enough to challenge the big boys."

BMW's Robert Kubica was two seconds slower as he carried out a similar programme. The team had planned to switch his focus to KERS development work in the afternoon, but a mechanical failure meant he returned to the non-KERS car for the rest of the day.

The team's test driver Christian Klien was evaluating different variations of the KERS and felt BMW were getting to grips with the device.

"We made good progress today," Klien said. "We still have a lot of work to do on the KERS system. But the promising test results show we are moving in the right direction."

Williams also completed their 2008 test programme at Jerez today with Kazuki Nakajima again behind the wheel. The Japanese completed 131 laps with a best time of 1:19.341 as he worked on the 2009 aero package and slick tyres.

"Unlike last week when the weather was quite bad, I've covered a lot of mileage with the car, which was good for me as it's allowed me to get used to all the changes," said Nakajima.

"In terms of what we've been testing, we've worked on set-up and the aero package for next year, but we mainly concentrated on the slick tyres this week. It is quite interesting to drive on slicks."

Today's times:

Pos  Driver     Team                  Time      Laps
 1.  Vettel     Red Bull-Renault (B)  1:16.617  107
 2.  Buemi      Red Bull-Renault (B)  1:16.988   92
 3.  Kubica     BMW-Sauber       (B)  1:19.013  100
 4.  Klien      BMW-Sauber       (B)  1:19.066   38
 5.  Nakajima   Williams-Toyota  (B)  1:19.341  131