Zoom Heidfeld gets some gusto

A second day of testing was on the schedule at the Monza track on Thursday, where all the Formula One teams have gathered to prepare for the upcoming Belgian and Italian races.

The top timesetters were not as close as yesterday, but the results are interesting nonetheless as times were generally better and different setup configurations began to appear.

BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld was the one to deliver the fastest performance of the day around the high-speed circuit: in covering the nearly six kilometres of track, the German set a quickest lap of 1:22.621. The result is nearly a second quicker than Felipe Massa's best lap achieved Wednesday.

Coming next a quarter-second close, Nico Rosberg made progress at the wheel of the Williams Toyota FW30. He was followed by Heikki Kovalainen aboard the McLaren Mercedes MP4-23.

Fourth-fastest was the Toro Rosso STR3 handled by Sebastian Vettel, who did well ahead of another Ferrari-powered car as Felipe Massa's red F2008 followed two hundredths of a second near. The last driver to remain within a second of today’s best lap, Fernando Alonso took over the test duties for Renault and set himself sixth-quickest overall.

Adrian Sutil's Force India racer preceded Red Bull Renault's Mark Webber, who reached seventh position. The Red Bull team is still working on bettering their RB4 package, and with that aim the Australian ran the highest number of laps today, doing one better than Rosberg's 100.

Ninth-quickest Jarno Trulli had a productive day with the Toyota TF108 as he worked on preparing his home Grand Prix. The top ten was completed by a second Toro Rosso driver, with Sebastien Bourdais taking over the test duties from Vettel for a short afternoon programme.

Appearing last on the roster, with each driver two seconds off the day's quickest lap, the Honda duo of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button continued their work on the notoriously difficult RA108.

The teams will conduct another test day tomorrow before setting out for the Belgian Ardennes and next week's Grand Prix.

Monza - 28/08/2008
1. N. Heidfeld - BMW Sauber F1.08 - 1:22.621 (+ 0.000 ) - 89 laps
2. N. Rosberg - Williams Toyota FW30 - 1:22.879 (+ 0.258 ) - 100 laps