Red Bull, meanwhile, ran into their first reliability setback of the year after an electrical problem struck early on the RB8 to leave world champion Sebastian Vettel a spectator for much of the day, although he still finished third in the order.

While issues with the F2012 meant Alonso himself completed only 39 laps, his early forays gave a first glimpse of the new car’s underlying pace despite Ferrari having stressed since the start of the week’s running that, given the radically different nature of their new challenger, the first test has been all about data gathering rather than lap times.

Taking the soft Pirelli tyres for two relatively short stints, he first set a time of a 1m19.289s before immediately lowering that mark to 1m18.877s at the start of his next six-lap run, which put him within four tenths of a second of the best lap achieved by Lotus’s Romain Grosjean yesterday. 

He didn’t improve thereafter in his limited re-appearances on the track but it was still enough to see him finish 0.720s clear of surprise second-placed man Jean-Eric Vergne in the Toro Rosso.

Frenchman Vergne, completing his second day in the car, said the more familiar he got with the STR7 the more he was able to understand and develop set-up directions which he believes took the car’s performance forward.

Vettel returned to the track at 2.25pm local time and squeezed in 50 laps to finish right behind Vergne, with Lewis Hamilton putting another 86 laps on the McLaren to take a close fourth.

Some minor water leaks on the promising Lotus E20, meanwhile, interrupted Grosjean’s second day in the car. The Frenchman, who still ended the week with the fastest time for a 2012 machine, got his first run on Pirelli’s soft tyres this morning before switching to some longer-run simulations in the afternoon.

Sauber were another team to run into some minor glitches – a hydraulics leak on the C31 stopping Kamui Kobayashi out on the circuit and causing a brief red-flag period – but elsewhere there were some impressive lap totals.

The new Renault-engined Williams ran reliability enough for Bruno Senna to complete his week’s work with 125 laps, while Nico Hulkenberg’s lap count totalled 90 as the German finally got his pre-season underway following Jules Bianchi’s untimely crash in the Force India VJM05 yesterday.

Caterham’s new CT01, which is equipped with KERS for the first time this winter, also continued to run very reliably and today allowed Jarno Trulli to get 117 laps on the board on his return to action.

The veteran Italian has already seen enough to declare the new car a step forward: “My first impression of the car was that it is good – a definite progression from 2011 and a good basis for us to work on for the season ahead. Its reliability has been demonstrated all week here in Jerez and we have generated a lot of data, particularly on KERS and the 2012 tyres which will help us improve setups for the next couple of tests.”

“We know there’s a lot more to come in pure pace – perhaps we were the only team to run without dropping the fuel but we wanted to focus on running through the development program and making sure we completed the plan each day.”

JEREZ TEST, Day 4
1. Alonso Ferrari 1m18.877s 39 Laps
2. Vergne Toro Rosso 1m19.597s 80 Laps
3. Vettel Red Bull 1m19.606s 50 Laps
4. Hamilton McLaren 1m19.640s 86 Laps
5. Grosjean Lotus 1m19.729s 95 Laps
6. Kobayashi Sauber 1m19.834s 76 Laps
7. Hulkenberg Force India 1m19.977s 90 Laps
8. Senna Williams 1m20.132s 125 Laps
9. Trulli Caterham 1m22.198s 117 Laps

And the distributors, Universal Pictures, have announced that there will be a very special set of screenings of the film on a giant IMAX screen at the British Film Institute in London.

For those not familiar with IMAX, the key is not just the quality of the image but its enormous size. According to Wikipedia, “A standard IMAX screen is 22 × 16.1 m (72 × 52.8 ft), but can be larger.

“The increased resolution allows the audience to be much closer to the screen; typically all rows are within one screen height; conventional theatre seating runs 8 to 12 screen heights. Also, the rows of seats are set at a steep angle (up to 30° in some domed theatres) so that the audience is facing the screen directly.”

It should be an unforgettable experience for those lucky enough to see it.

The dates for the BFI screening are as follows:

Tuesday 28 February (21:15)
Thursday 1 March (21:15)
Sunday 4 March (18:30)

Standard seats are £9 for adults and £5-75 for children. You can book tickets by clicking on this link BOOK BFI IMAX TICKETS

The BFI is located on the south side of Waterloo Bridge, London SE1.

Meanwhile Nico Rosberg came in for Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes and continued to set the pace; the German running the same 2011 specification car with the blown diffuser as the team builds up data on the new generation Pirelli tyres.

Rosberg did his fastest time on a single lap run, edging out Romain Grosjean in the Lotus who did his time on the first lap of a six lap run. Grosjean covered 117 laps today and did a long run of 20 laps in the afternoon with times in the 1m 22s dropping to 1m 24s.

Everyone apart from Mercedes is coping with the loss of the downforce and rear end stability that the EBD brought. Of the 2012 cars on show the Red Bull seems to be handling as expected, able to knock off the lap times at will, without yet showing what it can do when pushed to the limit. Vettel set his time on the second lap of a four lap run and his long run pace indicated that at all stages he was carrying a lot of fuel.

Ferrari and McLaren are feeling their way, not even exploring the limits yet. Ferrari continue to make gentle progress with their revolutionary new car. Its engineers have been saying that some new things on the car, like the pullrod suspension, are working as expected, while others, like the exhausts are more complicated to understand and make the most of.

Alonso’s best today of 1m20.412s was set on the first lap of an eight lap run, while Hamilton’s 1m 19.464s was done on the first lap of a five lap run. Fuel loads are unknown in the case of all the short runs.

When he left Jerez yesterday, Felipe Massa told the Italian media that, “There is a lot of work to do, perhaps a little more than we had anticipated.” Massa spent much of his time data logging, but did observe that the F2012 Ferrari has less understeer than its predecessors and has “gigantic potential”. But there’s a lot of work to do to bed down a completely new concept before extracting those vital few final tenths of a second.

McLaren too has been taking small steps with its car, but today engineering boss Paddy Lowe said that Jenson Button had given the car a thumbs up as one he could “do business with.”

Bruno Senna took the wheel of the Williams and covered 125 laps, the most of any driver today. Caterham’s recently announced new tester Guido van der Garde got an outing today too, trying KERS for the first time. Heikki Kovalainen has given the new Caterham the thumbs up, saying that be believes it is closer to the midfield pace they have been hoping for.

FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting took the unusual step of attending the test to check on some of the interpretations of the new rules. He’s already intervened to ba Lotus’ innovative brake stabilisation system. But he gave the thumbs up to the exhaust exits on the Ferrari, which some rivals had questioned. He did however say that aero devices on brake ducts which channel the exhaust gases to the diffuser would not be permitted. This is a concept that some engineers were talking about during the launch season.

One whisper doing the rounds is that former Sauber technical director James Key has been linked with a move to Lotus Cars to work on their sportcar programme.

JEREZ TEST, Day 3
1 Rosberg Mercedes 1m17.613s 118 Laps
2 Grosjean Lotus 1m18.419s +0.806 117 Laps
3 Vettel Red Bull 1m19.297s +1.684 96 Laps
4 Hamilton McLaren 1m19.464s +1.851 80 Laps
5 Vergne Toro Rosso 1m19.734s +2.121 79 Laps
6 Perez Sauber 1m19.770s +2.157 48 Laps
7 Alonso Ferrari 1m20.412s +2.799 67 Laps
8 Senna Williams 1m21.293s +3.680 125 Laps
9 Van der Garde Caterham 1m23.324s +5.711 74 Laps

Last year’s race had to be cancelled due to political uprisings in the country and attempts by the FIA and F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone to reinstate the race later in the season were thwarted by the teams refusing to go.

The FIA’s rules state that if an event is called off within three months of taking place it cannot appear on the following year’s calendar and we are already passed that cut off point. The exception is a case of force majeure, but as the race has been on/off for 12 months it’s not easy to see how that might apply here.

At the same time there are other political winds which threaten the country, with escalating tension between Israel and Iran over the latter’s developing nuclear weapons capability. Middle East experts are now saying that a strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities is growing in likelihood and if that were to happen this Spring, Iran’s most likely first response would be to attack US military installations in Bahrain.

Whether the race happens or not will all come down to insurance. If the people and the cars, the TV companies and the F1 circus can be insured then the event is likely to take place.

At this stage the F1 teams are planning for it to be on and the personnel are still leaving it to the FIA to judge whether to hold the race or not. What will be decisive here, among other things, will be the UK Foreign office Travel Advice. If that were to switch to “Do not travel to Bahrain” then insurances would not be valid and the teams and others would decline to go.

There has been no official reaction so far today to the letter, but last month Bernie Ecclestone told an Austrian newspaper, “Everyone talks a lot about this part of the world, but Bahrain is the country in the region where there are the fewest problems,”

Before Christmas the FIA sent a delegation to visit Bahrain, with FIA president Jean Todt, Damon Hill and other officials checking out the situation. It is a very complex situation and a difficult one for the FIA to rule on as siding either way leads to controversy.

For the record the key points of the politicians’ letter today were:

“We note with concern the decision by Formula 1 to go ahead with the race in Bahrain scheduled for April.

“The continued political crisis in Bahrain is a troubling source of instability in the Gulf region, and the lack of any move towards political reconciliation concerns those who wish to see Bahrain move in the direction of greater democratic accountability.”

After explaining that they had hoped the outcome of the would have helped calm the situation, they said that in fact the opposite had happened.

“Two months on [from the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI)] we see an entrenchment of the positions of both sides which risks letting more extreme voices dictate the progress of the conflict. Given the current dire situation, with daily street protests and the deaths of more civilians, we do not believe that the time is right for Formula 1 to return to Bahrain.

“Bahrain is a major trading hub and financial centre in the Middle East but this brings greater responsibility. Human rights and economic stability go hand in hand and the government of Bahrain must do more to persuade international events and corporations that Bahrain is a stable place to do business.

“Until it takes concerted measures to reform the electoral, penal and judicial processes, international observers as well as ordinary Bahrainis can have little confidence that Bahrain is on the path to reform and political stability.

We urge the FIA to reconsider its decision to continue with the race.”

At the end of a two-day trial in Munich, the 29-year-old was found guilty of assaulting the co-owner of the Lotus F1 team, Eric Lux, in a Shanghai nightclub last April following the Chinese Grand Prix and given an 18-month suspended sentence and a fine of £166,139.

But on Wednesday Sutil’s manager, Manfred Zimmermann, confirmed that his client was lodging an appeal against the decision. “We are convinced that this judgment is not appropriate,” Zimmermann was quoted as saying by the SID news agency.

“There are many things that went against us.”

The news agency reports that the public prosecutors in the case are also pushing for a harsher sentence to be handed down to Sutil, and that the appeal hearing is likely to go before a higher regional court.

An appeal hearing could see Lewis Hamilton be called to give evidence in front of the court as a witness, the McLaren driver having been with Sutil in the Shanghai nightclub when the offence occurred. He was excused from appearing at the original hearing as the dates clashed with commitments with his team.

Hamilton’s non-appearance at the hearing did not sit well with Sutil who took to the German press to describe his long-time friend as “a coward”, adding that he also didn’t receive any messages of support from the Briton prior to the case.

Having been dropped by Force India in December in favour of countryman Nico Hulkenberg for 2012 – a decision the team has since insisted had nothing to do with Sutil’s court case – Sutil’s F1 career is currently in limbo with all other seats taken on the grid and the fall-out from his case also likely to count against him.

Darren is widely regarded as one of Formula 1′s most creative and experienced photographers. A multi award winner, he has been the chosen photographic partner of JA on F1 since its inception in 2009 and a great supporter of the site.

The exhibition features many stunning images of Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and others in action at many of last year’s Grands Prix.

The artwork is presented in large framed limited edition prints, which are also available for purchase at the venue.

Collyer Bristow Gallery
4 Bedford Row
London
WC1R 4TF

Telephone for opening times: 020 7468 7200. A reminder: The exhibition runs from 6th to 16th February.

You can check out Darren’s work at http://www.darrenheath.com/ and follow him on Twitter @f1photographer

Alguersuari, who looks likely to appear in the F1 paddock this year as reserve driver for Mercedes, thought he had been given verbal confirmation before the end of the season that his seat at Toro Rosso was secure. But two weeks after the last race he was told that he was out.

Speaking on his own website the Spaniard said, “On December 13th, when Red Bull Racing told me that I was no longer part of the family I said that I was not going to judge them, neither I was feeling like a victim and that this was not a drama.

“But let me say just one thing: they hurt me, and moreover, it was unnecessary.

“I was verbally confirmed during the Brazilian GP. Hence, being confirmed by Red Bull and STR, I rejected a very good offer. Back on December 11th, Toro Rosso sent me to a PR event in Madrid, in the Cepsa headquarters to participate in the awarding medal ceremony to the employees with the longest seniority in the company and the Christmas dinner, with a very well prepared script from Faenza where I was supposed to talk about Toro Rosso, Cepsa and myself in 2012. Two days later, I received a phone call saying that they were not counting on me. They were two phone calls no longer than two minutes each.

“Neither I nor anyone else will ever understand why, having largely fulfilled all expectations that the team asked for, having improved my position from 2010 and having beaten my team-mate, I was ceased on December 14th when there was no reaction time to have a good option to run in 2012.”

The man in charge of Red Bull’s driver programme, Helmut Marko, explained his reasons for dropping Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi at the time thus, “Toro Rosso was created to give young drivers a chance. Alguersuari and Buemi had that chance for three years and after that period it’s possible to evaluate a drivers’ development.

“We didn’t see in them any possibility of growth. Both are Grand Prix drivers, but for us that’s not enough. We want Grand Prix winners.”

Toro Rosso now has Daniel Ricciardo and Jean Eric Vergne in the cars for 2012 and they started testing today in Jerez alongside the other contenders. It’s a great opportunity for both men, one of whom will aspire to fill a seat at Red Bull alongside Sebastian Vettel at some point in the future, depending on what happens with Mark Webber.

“I am not thinking about 2013…obviously there is probably a chance for 2013 with Red Bull Racing but I will not answer these kinds of questions because at the moment I don’t want to see too far ahead,” said Vergne.

Ricciardo, meanwhile, is the more experienced of the pair, having driven half a season with HRT last year. “It’s a bit emotional actually, seeing the first F1 car that will be mine to drive from the start of the season,” he said.

The multiple former champions endured what can only be described as an annus horribilis last year as it slumped to the worst constructors’ championship finish in its rich championship-laden history, ninth, after scoring five points all year.

But the new season already has a renaissance feel about it with the team reuniting with its former engine supplier Renault – who it won its last world championship with back in 1997, at the end of a near decade of dominance – and implementing a wide-reaching technical restructure, with the department now headed by Mike Coughlan and chief operations engineer Mark Gillan following the departure of Sam Michael to McLaren and co-founder Patrick Head’s decision to step down from the F1 side of the business.

Bruno Senna has also joined in place of countryman Rubens Barrichello to partner Pastor Maldonado, while despite continued difficult corporate market conditions, Williams has also confirmed the arrival of several well-known sponsors including Gillette and Head & Shoulders, along with Senna’s personal backer Embratel.

“One could say that looking at the Williams F1 Team today we are off to a truly fresh start,” Frank Williams said.

“We have a new car, new driver line up, new engine and new senior personnel. We also have a number of new partners who have joined the team in the past few months. I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome them formally and sincerely wish that they have an enjoyable and, most importantly, a valuable experience with us. The team has had a good winter at the factory and we feel ready and strong for the fight.”

Williams says the FW34, perhaps unsurprisingly given the performance of last year’s package, features “fewer than five per cent of the parts” on its predecessor, with the car’s nose featuring the now standard stepped design to comply with the revised regulations in this area.

Gillan, the team’s new chief operations engineer, said: “We are really looking forward to this season and from a personal perspective I can’t wait to get the FW34 on to the race track. In the run-up to Australia, we will be working hard with our exciting new driver line-up to ensure that we maximise and unlock the full potential of the FW34. It is imperative that we demonstrate a continuous improvement in our performance and deliver results throughout the season.”

Like many of its rival teams, Red Bull’s designers have gone for a step down to the low nose, keeping the main chassis level high, to improve airflow to the vanes, around the sidepods and to the floor or the car. Red Bull were the team that led the way in this line of aerodynamic thinking and most other teams have followed, but not McLaren, the odd ones out.

There is a school of thought that McLaren did not need to do the stepped nose because they anticipated the 2012 rules in their 2011 design and thus have an already well sorted concept. But more of that another time.

Last season was a runaway success for Sebastian Vettel in particular and this had a lot to do with Red Bull perfecting the exhaust blown diffuser (EBD), around which the car was designed and running the car with rake so the rear of the car was raised off the ground to maximise the effect of the diffuser.

This year the playing field has been levelled, with EBD’s banned and the designers forced to lower the rear of the car to harvest what downforce they can from the diffuser.

But engineers in the pit lane say that the diffuser is still an area of great interest and that there are some innovative ideas coming on stream around diffusers for 2012.

The tone of the messaging from the Red Bull team today was that its big advantage has gone with the banning of the EBD, the field will be closed up by the rule changes and that the RB8 is now essentially a four year old design.

You can choose to believe that or not, but as the team to beat at the end of last season, there is no reason to suspect that the designers have missed any and every opportunity to claw back the downforce lost in the changes and to stay ahead of the opposition.

But we are dealing with diminishing returns; this season and next are the final years of this era of Formula 1; from 2014 onwards the cars and their powertrains will change massively. So over the next two seasons we should see the cars close up more and more as the avenues for exploiting new ideas dwindle.

Vettel, for example, said, “It would be wrong to go into this season and expect 2011 to happen again, as in getting into the lead early and having a very big gap to other competitors in the Championship.

“So I think it will be very, very tight this year and anything else would be a surprise to be honest. Looking at the cars, you know there’s not much room we have left to play (with) for designers and to find something extra. You know, the last two years we have had two big things taken away, the double diffusers, plus, for this year, the system around the blown exhaust. So we are missing that and therefore I think it’s difficult to really create a difference.”

One talking point around the RB8 is the duct which is set into the step change on the nose of the car. It could be a red herring, as this launch pic doesn’t look very real. Many feel the launch version of the McLaren was a red herring, but if it’s genuine this inlet duct is clearly going to serve a purpose, which is likely to be aerodynamic.

With McLaren’s F Duct rear wing idea, a much smaller air intake on the monocoque fed a channel which led to an outlet the rear wing, which helped to shed drag. In today’s rules the DRS Wing has the same effect now, so there’s no reason to try that on the rear wing. It’s possible it could be working on the front wing, something Mercedes explored last season.

However one key area where downforce has been lost is the diffuser and the rear end – one wonders whether this inlet duct, which will harvest a lot of air given it’s size, is channeling additional airflow to the rear, possibly to work with the diffuser in some way.

It could be to cool the KERS, which was a major headache for the team last season. But the father of the all conquering generation of Red Bull cars is Adrian Newey and he’s famous for not having too many openings for cooling as they cut downforce, especially not one as large as this. Everyone expects something cunning from him, but he downplayed what he’d been able to do with this design. He said today,

“RB7 was designed around the exhaust, this year knowing that the exhaust position from last year would be taken away, we’ve had to go back and look at how we developed the car through the last one and two years.. and try.. to re-evaluate.

“Probably one of the key things there is the rear ride height. The exhaust allowed us to run a high rear ride height, it’s much more difficult without that to sustain a high rear height so we have to go back down and have to redevelop the car around that lower ride height.”

The cars run for the first time tomorrow. Jerez won’t teach us much, but the two tests at Barcelona will and a fairly accurate picture of underlying pace should be possible to establish by the end of the Barcelona tests.

Let’s hope Vettel is correct and the field has closed right up for 2012.

You can follow all the action from Jerez and the other tests in real time with tweets from teams, drivers and journalists at the circuit at http://twitter.jamesallenonf1.com

At the launch of the team’s F2012 on Friday its management and drivers put emphasis on the deliberately more aggressive approach the squad has taken in the conception process for this year’s car, after being accused of lacking innovation in recent years. The car duly the most striking stepped nose of the 2012 challenger’s released to date, while the team has broken with recent design convention by reintroducing a pull-rod front suspension.

The famous Maranello marque’s unequalled F1 pedigree – the team has won a record 16 constructors’ and 15 drivers’ titles – means second in the pecking order, let alone a distant third as was the case last season, is considered to be an underachievement. Indeed, Tombazis doesn’t try to hide the fact that the pressure is really now on.

“As chief designer of the Scuderia, I do feel even more pressure than normal this year because we are really all very keen and very eager to get back to being competitive and hopefully winning again,” he said in a video interview for the team’s website.

“That pressure I believe is felt by everyone – from the very upper levels of the company, to the lower level, almost by the whole company. This pressure is very tangible and it’s something that we’re all working to hopefully get a good result and manage to relieve some of that pressure.”

The F2012 is the first car to be delivered by the team’s revamped technical team, which is now led by Pat Fry following the departure of Aldo Costa last year. The restructuring process has continued apace with the recent arrivals of Steve Clark from Mercedes and ex-Bridgestone chief Hirohide Hamashima – additions Fry expects to be important ones.

“Steve Clark’s joined us who takes over the head of race engineering, which is a good help for me and means I can concentrate more on the car programme as a whole. We have Hamashima starting with us,” he said. “There’s a wealth of experience between Steve and Hamashima which we hopefully can share with our current knowledge and build and get a better understanding of how to maximise the performance of the tyres.”

Fry also revealed that Ferrari was aiming to “get our average pit stops down by maybe four tenths [of a second], if we’re lucky, five tenths” this season after being the third quickest in the field last season.