Wurz goes quickest at Jerez

The Austrian, driving the new Williams car, overcame two mechanical failures during the day to outpace Honda Racing's Jenson Button by just more than one tenth of a second.

Williams are still focusing their efforts on putting mileage onto their seamless shift gearbox, which they hope to get reliable enough to allow them to start the season with.

"Today I drove the FW28 for the first time. I soon familiarised myself with the new characteristics, which my lap times showed, and I feel quite comfortable with it already," said Wurz.

"Nevertheless, I am a perfectionist and that means that we need to do some more work toextract more out of our package. The basic elements are there, now it's just a race against timeto optimise everything before the season opener. We'll be pushing flat out."

Button and third fastest teammate Rubens Barrichello were working on long-run simulations and their pace once again proved that the team appear to be on course to achieve their target of challenging for race wins this season.

Nico Rosberg was fourth fastest in the second 2006 Williams, just ahead of Toyota's Ricardo Zonta and Olivier Panis, who both spent the day focusing on tyre work for Bridgestone.

Panis in particular was concentrating on a new rear construction, which was believed to deliver some encouraging results, while Zonta also carried out rear suspension work.

Christijan Albers had an embarrassing time in the first major test for Midland's new M16 when he pitched the car into the gravel trap with just five minutes of the session remaining.

Midland teammate Tiago Monteiro spent his day working with the old EJ15 car, prior to his first run in the M16 later this week.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time      Laps
 1.  Wurz          Williams-Cosworth    (B)  1:18.144   48
 2.  Button        Honda                (M)  1:18.250  141
 3.  Barrichello   Honda                (M)  1:18.626  112
 4.  Rosberg       Williams-Cosworth    (B)  1:18.735   84
 5.  Zonta         Toyota               (B)  1:20.162   85
 6.  Panis         Toyota               (B)  1:20.339   79
 7.  Albers        MF1-Toyota           (B)  1:21.551   74
 8.  Monteiro      MF1-Toyota           (B)  1:22.318   71

All Timing Unofficial