21 February: Pedro de la Rosa fastest on the first day at Valencia. Weather disrupts testing at Silverstone and Sauber discontinue their test due to bad weather.

The final pre-season tests are now underway with teams testing at Valencia, Silverstone and Imola.

At Valencia, McLaren, Ferrari and Williams started testing with the two McLaren test drivers Pedro de la Rosa and Alexander Wurz setting the fastest times in MP4/19B cars. Michael Schumacher in the F2004M was third fastest. The teams were mainly concentrating on tyre testing and evaluation.

Pedro de la Rosa covered the most number of laps with 125 followed by Alexander Wurz with 107 and Michael Schumacher with 90.

The test was interrupted by 3 red flags. One caused by a problem on Michael Schumacher's car and the other 2 due to problems with Mark Webber's car.

BAR and Toyota join the test tomorrow.

At Silverstone, bad weather severely affected the planned test by the Renault team. Test driver Franck Montagny only managed to complete 3 installation laps in the afternoon.

At Imola, the Sauber team decided to stop testing due to bad weather.

Sauber's Technical Director Willy Rampf said "Due to snow on the track and very low temperatures it became impossible to run the cars and therefore we decided to discontinue the test. Consequently we were not able to conduct our programme in the originally planned extent. Yet, this cancellation does not have a direct impact on our preparations for Melbourne."

Formula 1 Team notes and reports below

Valencia Times (as reported by Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo)

Driver	Team	Total Laps	Time
Pedro de la Rosa	McLaren	125	1:09.023
Alexander Wurz	McLaren	107	1:09.053
Michael Schumacher	Ferrari	90	1:11.338
Mark Webber	Williams	81	1:11.513
Rubens Barrichello	Ferrari	84	1:11.672