AT ROCKINGHAM

Nick Tandy delivered an impressive and heartening message yesterday at Rockingham, the JTR driver setting the fastest lap time in the day's final, damp test session to underline the team's pace and commitment just five days after the loss in a car accident of Nick's brother and team boss Joe Tandy.

Tandy's Mygale clocked a 1m 14.783s lap in the closing moments of the final session; he was the only driver in the session to break the 75-second mark for the 1.94-mile Northamptonshire circuit.

The day's dry morning session - preparation for next weekend's fifth and sixth rounds of the Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International Series - saw a new name at the top of the timesheets: Daisuke Nakajima.

Nakajima and his Raikkonen Robertson Racing Dallara-Mercedes made the best of the conditions to lap the speedway in a time of 1m 12.252s, a full tenth faster than any of his rivals could manage. Though comfortably inside the circuit lap record, Nakajima's time was more than a second shy of the testing mark set by championship leader Daniel Ricciardo in mid-March.

Other notable pacesetters today included Spain's Victor Garcia, who outpaced his Fortec Motorsport team-mate Riki Christodoulou by half a second in the dry to emerge second fastest, and T-Sport's Wayne Boyd, who was fourth fastest on the day, ahead of his team-mate Adriano Buzaid by three-thousandths of a second.

The wettest of the afternoon's sessions saw Carlin driver Oliver Oakes on top, a hundredth quicker than Christodoulou, with Tandy third fastest.

Gabriel Dias was the quickest of the three National Class runners in action in his T-Sport Dallara.

F3 TESTING TIMES ROCKINGHAM

AM dry / PM wet. Damp-track times in parentheses1 INT Daisuke Nakajima/JPN, RR Dallara-Mercedes, 1:12.252 (1:15.178)2 INT Victor Garcia/ESP, Fortec Dallara-Mercedes, 1:12.351 (1:15.321)3 INT Henry Arundel/GBR, Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen, 1:12.408 (1:15.176)4 INT Wayne Boyd/GBR, T-Sport Dallara-Volkswagen, 1:12.414 (1:15.707)5 INT Adriano Buzaid/BRA, T-Sport Dallara-Volkswagen, 1:12.417 (1:15.710)6 INT Max Chilton/GBR, Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen, 1:12.627 (1:15.148)7 INT Renger van der Zande/NED, Hitech Dallara-Mercedes, 1:12.665 (-)8 INT Daniel Ricciardo/AUS, Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen, 1:12.687 (1:15.484)9 INT Carlos Huertas/COL, RR Dallara-Mercedes, 1:12.696 (1:15.500)10 INT Nick Tandy/GBR, JTR Mygale-Mercedes, 1:12.732 (1:14.783)11 INT Oliver Oakes/GBR, Carlin Dallara-Volkswagen, 1:12.816 (1:15.932)12 INT Walter Grubmüller/AUT, Hitech Dallara-Mercedes, 1:12.869 (1:16.382)13 INT Riki Christodoulou/GBR, Fortec Dallara-Mercedes, 1:12.870 (1:15.475)14 NAT Gabriel Dias/BRA, T-Sport Dallara-Mugen Honda, 1:13.203 (1:16.913)15 INT Hywel Lloyd/GBR, CF Racing Dallara-Mugen Honda, 1:13.517 (1:15.726)16 NAT Daniel McKenzie/GBR, Fortec Dallara-Mugen Honda, 1:14.104 (1:23.235)17 INT Jay Bridger/GBR, Litespeed Mygale-Mugen Honda, 1:14.211 (-)18 NAT Victor Correa/BRA, Litespeed-Mugen Honda, 1:15.769 (1:21.952)

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