By SA07
April 1 2007

Renaults rookie Hekki Kovalainen finishes the 4th and final day on top with the new aero parts finally arriving. The Finn proving that Oz was a thing of the past. Kovy set a time of 1m35.757s his fastest for him this week as he concentrated on a qualifying simulation at the end of the morning but by afternoon it was a different story for Renault as yet again they were stopped by a mechanical failure. Just behind Renaults Kovalainen was the Ferrari of Felipe Massa just getting pipped to 1st by 0.05s. He completed 73 laps of the Sepang circuit while trying out different set ups and electrical devices. Super Aguri takes more pace as our Anthony Davidson clocked up 3rd out of 12 runners. He focused on evaluating tyres, control settings and a few minor aero tweaks.

He reported that he was unhappy with the balance of the car over long runs. Nico Rosberg gave Williams another boost with the fourth quickest time just ahead of there team to beat Toyota with Franck Montagny. Problems continued for Bmw and Heidfeld with most of there day being held up with an engine problem which costed them 2 hours.

The Honda works team rounded up there test with Jenson Button in 7th reporting small gains, while McLarens Hamilton finished 8th behind him in his lowest position of the week. Red Bull goes back down the grid with there B team behind them Toro Rosso which proves that there not quite there on pace yet. Hondas Klien and McLarens De La Rosa rounded off the time sheets to complete the last day of testing. Teams now look to the two flyaway races in Sepang and Bahrain before testing will kick back off again.
Below are reactions from Anthony Davidson speaking too the Offical Super Aguri F1 site which can be found here http://www.saf1.co.jp/en/

“It was not a straight forward week for me. Taku had a good couple of days when the weather was fine and the general balance of the car was good. When I took over in the afternoon (Day 2) I was expecting a nice balance, but I couldn't get to grips with the set-up. We thought that we could work on it the following day but we had rain on and off which interrupted the test. During the dry running we were able to move the car in the right direction, but we just ran out of time.

Today we completed half a day's running with the tyres and engine mileage we had left. I felt more confident in the car and the lap times were quite good, but even so we have a lot of work to do on the long run balance next Friday. The test here has been very valuable for me as it is a circuit that I did not know well and I have learnt a lot from our time here this week.”

Offical Times from ITV-F1.com
Testing times from Sepang (March 30)

1. KOVALAINEN Renault 1m35.757s
2. MASSA Ferrari 1m35.808s
3. DAVIDSON Super Aguri 1m36.787s
4. ROSBERG Williams 1m37.002s
5. MONTAGNY Toyota 1m37.206s
6. HEIDFELD BMW Sauber 1m37.318s
7. BUTTON Honda 1m37.326s
8. HAMILTON McLaren 1m37.448s
9. WEBBER Red Bull 1m37.778s
10. LIUZZI Toro Rosso 1m38.542s
11. KLIEN Honda 1m39.175s
12. DE LA ROSA McLaren 1m39.100s