Giancarlo Fisichella took eighth spot for
Force India, two places ahead of team-mate
Adrian Sutil as the duo sandwiched
Honda's
Jenson Button on the final timesheets for the day. The Silverstone-based outfit's hopes of conducting much meaningful running with its lower downforce aero package were scuppered by the weather, and a lengthy clutch problem for Fisichella also curtailed the Italian's running before he handed over to Sutil for the afternoon session.
“I did some running in the dry,” Fisichella related as he approaches his 200th grand prix start in Monaco next weekend, “but we had a mechanical problem and had to come in, which was a shame as then it started raining. We could still do 31 laps in the morning to try out the wet set up and made some improvements to the balance in the wet, which could be useful.”
“This afternoon was very wet until the sun came out towards the end of the day,” added Sutil. “As such we started on extreme wets and got in a couple of runs to try out the wet set-up. We did some starts and everything was okay, but with these conditions it is very difficult to draw any real conclusions.”
“As we expected much of today was a wash-out,” concluded Force India chief race and test engineer Dominic Harlow. “It was possible to run dry tyres briefly at the start of the day with Giancarlo, but unfortunately we had a mechanical problem that meant we lost some time in these conditions. The afternoon was also very wet, and Adrian could complete just 13 laps.”
Button, for his part, spent his two days behind the wheel of Honda's RA108 testing out aerodynamic evolutions and tyre evaluations – completing 174 laps over the two days he ran, following on from the Brackley-based squad's test driver Alex Wurz, who had covered 142 laps concentrating on aero and set-up work for Monaco on the opening day.
