Yet another day with Ferrari on top of the timesheets today in Valencia, but this time it was Fernando Alonso who led the way.
A massive crowd of over 35,000 (compared to 7,000 for the last 2 days) greeted Alonso at the track. His fastest lap was a 1m11.470s. This was not only a great lap, but it was at the start of a long stint, so it wasn’t just a loght fuel load that was pushing him on. However, Alonso has remained cautious, saying:
“I think maybe if we topped the times the three days is related to fuel load or whatever, or maybe because it’s true we are competitive. But before being competitive we need to make sure we do a lot of laps and that the car is strong and can finish all the grands prix. We are at that period of winter testing.”
“We need to make the car very, very strong and until Barcelona or the last test at Jerez I think we will not look for the performance.”
He added: “The first impression is always good. It was very good last year, and I was not in Q3 very often. For that I’m very, very cautious.”
Pedro de la Rosa continued to set fast laps, coming in 2nd with a best lap of 1m12.094s. It is understood that the Mercedes car does not have its full diffuser integrated yet, but Michael Schumacher still came third with 1m12.438s.
Behind them, Jaime Alguersuari was fourth, followed by Jenson Button, Vitaly Petrov and Nico Hulkenberg. Nico was involved in an incident with de la Rosa earlier in the day, where the two clashed. Hulkenberg’s car was believed to be marginally damaged. He still managed to get 126 laps out of the car across the day.
Times from the day:
Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Alonso Ferrari (B) 1:11.470 127
2. de la Rosa BMW Sauber-Ferrari (B) 1:12.094 80
3. M.Schumacher Mercedes GP (B) 1:12.438 82
4. Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:12.576 97
5. Button McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:12.951 82
6. Petrov Renault (B) 1:13.097 75
7. Hulkenberg Williams-Cosworth (B) 1:13.669 126
Pictures from today's testing:
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