By Nick Sparkes
March 24 2006

For the last two days Kovalainen for Renault has been fastest, and the two Toyota’s have ended up fifth and sixth, amazingly there was no change today. Jarno Trulli left the circuit last night and was replaced by Panis. He and Zonta continued to focus on tyres for the next Grand Prix. Heikki Kovalainen continued to set the pace, with McLaren’s Pedro de la Rosa closely finishing behind in second. Nick Heidfeld completed just fewer than 200 laps in his BMW-Sauber, a sign the team are working on improving their reliability.

For Toyota, it was another day at the bottom of the time sheets, but Zonta was confident that the team has moved forward. "We continued today with tyre testing. I did three long runs in the morning and another three in the afternoon because the track temperature changed over the day, and therefore we repeated the test. This was very important for Melbourne because we will make the tyre decision for this race based on these runs. I feel this test has brought encouraging results, nevertheless the team will push forward and continue to work on finding the best solutions for the coming races."

Whereas Panis was happy to be back, and thriving in the teams positive attitude. "The test went well and it looks constructive for the team. When we started this morning, the track conditions were cold and damp, but we used the weather to our advantage, testing wet tyres in the morning and dry tyres in the afternoon. Everyone worked hard and we are still sorting out the car set-up, but the results from this test give us some positive insight for the next race and tests."

1	H. Kovalainen	Renault		01:05.287	92
2	P. de la Rosa	McLaren		01:05.381	98
3	N. Heidfeld	BMW		01:05.626	192
4	G. Paffett	McLaren		01:05.709	61
5	R. Zonta	Toyota		01:06.949	139
6	O. Panis	Toyota		01:07.851	110