By Nick Sparkes
April 6 2006

Toyota might had ended their second day a bit lower down the time sheets than yesterday, but the team continued to pump in some impressive times, with Ricardo Zonta remaining within a second of the front runners. But, surprisingly it wasn’t Kovalainen’s name at the top of the time sheets. McLaren’s Pedro de la Rosa was fastest, using the teams’ upgraded Mercedes V8 engine, with Robert Doornbos who was the slowest car on track yesterday, finishing 0.031 seconds behind the McLaren driver in second. Heikki Kovalainen had to make do with third in his Renault, although covering only 11 laps throughout the day. Gary Paffett continued in the second McLaren, albeit once again using a limited V10, in fourth.

Giancarlo Fisichella became the second race driver to take part in the Paul Ricard test in the second Renault, Fisichella spent most of the day working on engine mapping.

Ricardo Zonta and Olivier Panis were once again out in force for Toyota, working on set-up and tyres for the next two Grand Prix’s. The team again had another reliable and successful day with Zonta finishing sixth with Panis little over a second behind Pedro de la Rosa in tenth.

"We tried numerous things today and continued our tyre test.” Said Zonta after another hard day. “My car was reliable and therefore I could put in a lot of laps. We will do longs runs tomorrow as we did not have enough time to finish them today, because we had to concentrate on gaining results for the Imola tyre choice."

In contrast Panis’ day was a little more complicated. "We wanted to use the race chassis today, which the team did a good job of setting-up in time for the second half of the day. It turned out to be a hard day for me and my team, as we had some issues with different set-ups in the afternoon, but we are still positive and looking forward to tomorrow to finish the tyre testing that we need to achieve."

In between the two Toyota’s was the Toro Rosso of Vitantono Liuzzi in seventh, and the two BMW-Sauber’s.

1	P. de la Rosa		McLaren		01:04.147	147
2	R. Doornbos		Red Bull		01:04.262	116
3	H. Kovalainen		Renault		01:04.274	11
4	G. Paffett		McLaren		01:04.279	127
5	G. Fisichella		Renault		01:04.380	104
6	R. Zonta		Toyota		01:04.655	131
7	V. Liuzzi		Scuderia Toro Rosso		01:04.914	169
8	J. Villeneuve		BMW		01:04.961	50
9	R. Kubica		BMW		11:05.398	121
10	O. Panis		Toyota		01:05.867	43