Davidson on top

Anthony Davidson has made it a clean sweep in Friday testing for this weekend’s race by setting the fastest time in both free practice sessions. The Briton’s best of 1:26.882 was almost two seconds faster than he managed this morning, showing just how much difference a rubbered in track can make to lap times here in Australia.

The Honda driver is a master of the Friday sessions and has rarely finished out of the top three so far this season. He was joined at the top of the times by another Friday specialist Alex Wurz. The Williams driver’s best was just 0.010 seconds slower than Davidson’s top time.

Third this afternoon was BMW’s Robert Kubica, who made up for a disappointing morning in which his car expired to set a good pace and a good number of laps as he explored set-up possibilities for the team’s two race drivers. Fourth was Jenson Button, further confirming Honda’s pace this weekend, as World Champion Fernando Alonso slotted into fifth, just over half a second behind Davidson.

Sixth place went to the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher, as Kimi Raikkonen took his McLaren to seventh. The Finn was followed by the Honda of Barrichello, with Montoya ninth and Felipe Massa rounding out the top ten.

The session saw its fair share of incident with first Yuji Ide and then Tonio Liuzzi spinning after touching the grass on the back reaches of the track. Ide performed a neat pirouette and recovered to the pits, but Liuzzi, who spun in exactly the same place, was not so lucky and backed his Toro Rosso into the wall and out of the session.

From this afternoon’s times, it would seem that Honda is the team in the ascendancy at the moment with all three of its drivers in the top ten. Discounting Friday drivers from the mix however, we see a clear pattern emerging with Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso at the head of the field, followed by Schumacher and Raikkonen. With Giancarlo taking the overall eleventh fastest lap this afternoon, it is clear that both Renaults are in the hunt for a good result, but as has been the case all season, it looks like it will be a fantastic scrap between the Renault F1 Team, Honda, Ferrari and McLaren, with Williams, who never run many laps on Friday, lurking as the team most likely to spring a surprise come qualifying tomorrow.