Webber and Red Bull quickest on penultimate day in Jerez
Webber was quickest on Friday, but he was keeping quiet about the pace of the Red Bull RB6
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Mark Webber went quickest during the penultimate day of testing in Jerez on Friday, setting a 1m19.299 on his way to completing 115 laps.
The teams were greeted by unexpected sunshine on Friday, following two days of disruptive wet weather at the southern Spanish circuit, allowing them to really push on with their testing programmes before heading to Barcelona next week.
Webber took the controls of Red Bull's RB6 from his team-mate Sebastien Vettel on Friday and went on to record the quickest time of the day at around midday, beating the quickest time of testing in Jerez overall, which was set by Lewis Hamilton last week.
The Australian was joined at the top of the timesheets by Spaniard Fernando Alonso in the Ferrari F10, who set a time of 1m20.115, and by Jenson Button in the McLaren, who was a further three tenths down.
Alonso did well to make up for all the time lost on Wednesday and Thursday because of the changeable conditions, racking up a total of 132 laps, despite being halted on no less than six occasions by red flags.
"I'm satisfied by today, because we could drive many miles on the dry," said Alonso.
"The results are positive, because we got to know the new car better.
"Also my place in the team is improving from day to day, as is my feeling for the F10. We can confirm that step by step we're arriving at 100 per cent."
At around one hour into the session, Heikki Kovalainen caused the first stoppage, when his Lotus T127 came to a halt out on track because of an issue with his clutch sensor.
Newcomer Lucas di Grassi also suffered mechanical failures and stopped out on track twice in his Virgin Racing VR-01, and Kamui Kobayashi's day was wrecked when his Sauber C29 succumbed to a problem with its fuel system, just two hours into the session.
"It was obviously not a perfect day, but I prefer to have a technical problem now rather than in the first race," said Kobayashi.
"Although I could only complete a limited number of laps, we learned a few things on which we can build tomorrow."
Thomas Hunsicker, Sauber's test engineer added: "The conditions were good today, but unfortunately we weren't able to make the best use of them. We lost a lot of time with a fuel system problem.
"However, the weather forecast is fine for tomorrow, so we should still be able to complete the main part of our planned programme for this test."
Webber also caused a red flag situation and Nico Hulkenburg brought the session to a premature end when his Williams FW32 stopped minutes before 17:00 local time.