Robert Wickens made it three different pacesetters in as many days as the final World Series by Renault test of the pre-season came to a close at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya.
The Canadian, who immediately left to catch a flight to China for the penultimate round of the A1 Grand Prix series, followed Marco Bonanomi - who jetted to Dubai after day one to contest the GP2 Asia finale - and Fabio Carbone at the head of the daily charts as the WSbR proved as competitive as ever ahead of its opening round in Italy on 26-27 April.
Thursday's weather was perfect for testing and, right from the word go, the drivers launched straight into pursuit of fast lap times, some even opting to switch to a fresh set of tyres without much delay. The in-form Wickens put in a number of quick laps in succession, before posting a 1min 32.971secs effort that pushed him under Bonanomi's time to beat from Tuesday. Once established at the top of the times, Wickens joined his rival in leaving the circuit....
At the point of his departure, Wickens headed Carlin team-mate Mikhail Aleshin, P1's Giedo van der Garde - who proved fast all week without ever testing the end-of-day times - Draco's Marco Barba and Prema's Miguel Molina.
Barba's team-mate Bertrand Baguette then took advantage of a lap with a little less traffic to move up into second position, with Tech 1 rookie Charles Pic doing likewise to improve to third. The teams then made the most of what was left of the morning session to fine-tune their set-ups, with little improvement in times.
"The conditions were ideal this morning, so we just had to switch to a fresh set of tyres," Baguette smiled, "I made a slight error on my fastest lap, but the results are promising. We have been up in the leading group since the start of the testing and that can only be a good sign. Now we are going to switch the car to its Monza set-up, as the season gets underway with one of the big ones!''
![Robert Wickens - Carlin Motorsport [pic credit: Renault Sport Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/397440.jpg)
