Paul Ricard Day 4: 0.6 Seconds Away From Ferrari

By Sam Cooper
May 19 2007

McLaren’s test and reserve driver Pedro De La Rosa was in action for the team today, he was testing on the Montreal track layout and achieved the third best time of the day, sadly though he was just under a second away from the fastest runner of Kimi Räikkönen, McLaren will need to make improvements for the Canadian Grand Prix, which is just 4 weeks away.

The team spent the first two days testing on the Monaco configuration circuit, on which current championship leader Lewis Hamilton set the fastest times on both days that they were testing, McLaren look to be on top in Monaco, while Ferrari look set to dominate in Canada.

Pedro managed to complete a modest 78 laps of the circuit, bringing valuable data back for the team to analyse to beat Ferrari in Canada. Renault looks good to score some points in Canada as well, the new R27, finally looking to have some reasonable pace. Although Renault have been known to run low fuel, to bring the hopes of the team up, as they have done just that in past tests this year.

Red Bull and David Coulthard are also looking very good for points and possibly a podium as David set the tests 6th fastest time, sadly though that was still 1.2 seconds away from the super fast Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen.

Testing on Friday was very close the eleven drivers that were present today were separated by a mere 1.3 seconds, if the times are this close at the races at Monaco and Canada, then it maybe harder for McLaren to get wins and podiums, but it will provide the TV audience a spectacular viewing sceptical, something that we haven’t had in formula one for a long time.

Testing times will be shown below.