After the third day of running this week, Timo Glock was the driver setting the pace at the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain as the test continued with Toyota, Ferrari and BMW. Once again, the trio of teams managed to get some decent mileage in and Toyota are showing that their TF109 is quite reliable, completing a further 132 laps. This brings their total for this week up to an impressive 421 laps. Nick Heidfeld and Felipe Massa were also out in force for BMW and Ferrari respectively.

While the Toyota appears to be developing well, Ferrari were faced with further troubles in the morning when after just a handful of laps, Felipe Massa was forced to wait in the garage while the mechanics stripped the gearbox down. The Brazilian was able to return to the track although at the end of his running in the afternoon, an electrical problem brought his day to slightly premature end. Nick Heidfeld also had two stoppages on track, although the German was upbeat about the progress the team are making with the F1.09 car.

But despite [the stoppages] I managed to run for 444 kilometres and we made good progress with the development of the car. Nick Heidfeld.

We didn’t have any major problems and we again made it through a lot of work. We concentrated on set-up and went through our programme smoothly. It has been a bit tricky to drive today because there was a lot of wind, which was also blowing from a different direction to yesterday when Jarno [Trulli] was driving. But in the end I’m happy that we did so much work and it’s positive that we found some useful directions to work with. Timo Glock.

Meanwhile, McLaren visited Kemble Airfield to complete some straight-line testing with Pedro De La Rosa. Sidepodcast were once again there and noted that the MP4-24 was carrying some kind of scaffold structure on the left sidepod. Pedro De La Rosa didn’t manage to complete much running, but presumably the Woking-team got what they needed from the morning’s run.

Bahrain Test Day Three Results Table		Lap Time Fastest Time Set	Laps Set Number Laps Set
1.	Timo Glock Toyota	1m32.492s	132 Laps
2.	Felipe Massa Ferrari	1m32.917s	105 Laps
3.	Nick Heidfeld BMW	1m32.993s	82 Laps