Jerez Day 3 – Vettel has the last word of the year!

It was once again a Sebastien who set the fastest time in the Jerez tests for the third and final day of the season. Even though Sebastien Buemi had taken the best time in the last five test sessions, this time it is Sebastien Vettel who stands out, once again for Red Bull.

The German seized the fastest time in cool but pleasant conditions. His time of 1:16.617 allows him to set the best time of the end of the season and close the year.

Buemi, who is indeed expected to be present in F1 next year, follows Vettel by four hundredths thanks to Toro Rosso.

« We have done everything we could these last two weeks to perform well. » comments Vettel. « I hope this will give us a good start for next year and that we will be good right from the first Grand Prix. »

The two BMW drivers, as they have for a few days now, are trailing the Red Bulls. Robert Kubica was two seconds slower but is ahead of his teammate Christian Klien by a few thousandths. They were able to complete their program, mainly focused on the KERS system. However, Kubica had to switch to a 2008 version spare car early in the afternoon due to a mechanical issue with the Hybrid version.

“We made good progress today,” said Klien. “We still have a lot of work to do on the KERS system, but the lap times show that we are heading in the right direction!”

Williams also completed their 2008 program, and still with Nakajima. The Japanese driver was the most enduring with over 131 laps and was three-tenths off the BMWs, even though they had the same aerodynamic characteristics. Nakajima is happy with this season: « Unlike last week, when the weather was quite bad, I covered a lot of kilometers with the car, allowing us to do everything we wanted and catch up. »

Results Private Tests Jerez – Day 3 – Wednesday, December 17, 2008