One of the headlines is that Pirelli have done an excellent job with the first stage of development of their tyres. Engineers and drivers alike are full of praise for them. The 2012 tyres are more durable and offer good grip. This was particularly evident when the track was cooler; the wear was significantly better than last year.

According to Pirelli, during the four days in Jerez “a total of 3380 laps were covered by 23 drivers – equating to 14,949 kilometres.” The new medium tyre completed the most with 1776 laps, followed by the new soft with 1010 laps run and the hard with 594 laps run.

Lewis Hamilton gave his assessment of the competition at the front, “The Ferrari’s not really showing anything just yet. Of course, the Red Bull looks fast – as it usually does – and we’re there I think.”

Although RBR have not gone for an eye catching time this week Vettel did use a set of new soft tyres on the final day, but his best time in a seven lap run on them was a 1m 19.7s, which indicates that he had a fair bit of fuel on board. His next run was on a set of used medium tyres and he did a 1m 19.6s straight off and then a sequence as follows – 1:28.1; 1:21.1; 1:21.5; 1:21.5; 1:21.7; 1:21.5; 1:21.7.

The Red Bull certainly looks consistent, as it did last year, driveable, stable and fast.

Hamilton did a nine lap run on new soft tyres and his first lap was a 1m19.9s, so it’s hard to draw too many conclusions. If the fuel loads were the same the McLaren is 3/10ths slower, but there’s no way of knowing how different the loads were. Just 10 kilos difference would account for 3/10ths of a second.

Alonso did a 6 lap run on new softs where the first lap was 1m 18.9s, but given the way the Ferrari had been running this week this was likely to have been done on less fuel than Vettel or Hamilton were using in comparable runs. There was no comparable used medium tyre run by the Ferrari, due to some reliability problems in the afternoon.

“Eight or nine hours of testing and only 40 laps, “said Alonso yesterday, “In Montmelo (Barcelona) we must do a hundred odd. We’ve understood only about 20% of what we need. This is a completely new car. In four days we’ve turned it around and seen progress even if it doesn’t show in the times.

“There is still much to do, especially on the aerodynamics and on reliability.”

Meanwhile Grosjean did a 13 lap run on used mediums with the following sequence – 1:23.6; 1:23.2; 1:23.4 ;1:23.5; 1:23.6; 1:23.6; 1:24.1; 1:24.2; 1:25.0; 1:25.2; 1:24.6; 1:24.9; 1:24.7; 1:25.3; 1:25.9.

Hamilton’s 13 lap run on used medium tyres was as follows – 1:22.1; 1:21.7; 1:21.8; 1:21.9; 1:21.9; 1:22.0; 1:22.0; 1:22.0; 1:22.5; 1:27.5; 1:22.6; 1:22.1; 1:23.9; 1:23.5.

Although you cannot zero in on the precise underlying pace of the cars, you can look at reliability and this shows that both Ferrari and Red Bull had some problems. Ferrari’s are to be expected given a completely new concept. The Red Bull niggles on an evolutionary car are a little more worrying, but they have time to sort them out.

For the most part the McLaren, Lotus, Williams and the midfield cars ran pretty reliably. Kimi Raikkonen covered 192 laps in his two days in the car and he’s clearly right there despite two years on the sidelines. It helps a bit that his team mate Grosjean is a little ring-rusty and playing catch up.

Engineers are saying that its going to be close this year behind the front three or four teams (Mercedes’ new car is an unknown) and that it will be vital to have all the performance enhancing parts working well in order to get results. These are things like KERS, exhausts blowing on rear wing elements and other aero developments that teams incorporate as the year goes on. Anyone who’s limited on development by budget could find themselves sliding back as the year goes on.

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

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

The seven times world champion was at the wheel of the 2011 Mercedes, the only top team not to bring its new car to the first test.

After some early fast laps by Red Bull’s Mark Webber, Schumacher lowered the bar set by Raikkonen yesterday to the mid 1m 18s, substantially faster than the same car managed at an early stage in 2011. This shows the development a car goes through in the course of a year. Red Bull’s Christian Horner has estimated the improvement of a car from a front running team at around two seconds from pre-season test to last Grand Prix of the year.

Schumacher was using the old Mercedes to evaluate the new Pirelli tyres and today soft and medium compounds were tried out by many teams. These are new tyres for 2012, with only the supersoft from 2011 remaining in Pirelli’s range this year.

Yesterday’s pace setter Raikkonen spent much of the morning in the Lotus garage after going off track into the gravel on an early run.

Webber was second fastest while Toro Rosso’s new boy Dan Ricciardo continues to go well in third ahead of the Force India car which was driven today by reserve driver Jules Bianchi. But the times are not yet really significant as there are various programmes at work in these early stages with the new cars.

Ferrari and McLaren continues to take their time to get up to speed. Everyone has different programmes to work through in these early days, depending on the nature of their car. Ferrari, for example, has more work than the others in terms of measuring the car’s behaviour and understanding it because it is a completely new design, a total break from the past. Most other cars are an evolution of a design philosophy from last year.

The teams need to make sure that the aerodynamic data on the track matches the data coming from the wind tunnel – this was an area where Ferrari struggled last year, for example at this early stage. Then there are new electronic systems to check over, loads passing through Ferrari’s radical new pullrod front and rear suspension need to be measured and understood. There is a lot to do before the team can start to chase some performance from it.

Exhausts
One area where there will be a lot of development for everyone over the next month is in the position of the exhausts. These have been moved by regulation, to outlaw the exhaust blown diffusers of the last two seasons. Now they must be placed, higher, further towards the front of the car and the exits must be round.

Everyone was cagey about this before testing started, with McLaren even launching its car with fake exhausts! Engineers say that the final position of the exhausts for most teams won’t be defined until the end of the testing season.

There are a number of different interpretations on view in Jerez, although nothing radical so far. Ferrari designer Nicolas Tombazis told Gazzetta dello Sport yesterday that there is nothing on any car which Ferrari hasn’t thought of.

Red Bull has the lowest exhausts, below the rear suspension arm, still working with part of the floor at least. Many teams are blowing across the bottom element of the rear wing, McLaren have their exhausts well forward in the sidepods, Lotus Renault have a straightforward exhaust exit of the kind we saw in F1 a few years ago.

Jerez Testing: Day 2

1 Schumacher Mercedes 1m18.561s 132 laps
2 Webber Red Bull 1m19.184s +0.623 97 Laps
3 Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1m19.587s +1.026 100 Laps
4 Bianchi Force India 1m20.221s +1.660 46 Laps
5 Raikkonen Lotus 1m20.239s +1.678 117 Laps
6 Di Resta Force India 1m20.272s +1.711 69 Laps
7 Massa Ferrari 1m20.454s +1.893 95 Laps
8 Button McLaren 1m20.688s +2.127 85 Laps
9 Perez Sauber 1m20.711s +2.150 67 Laps
10 Maldonado Williams 1m21.197s +2.636 97 Laps
11 Kovalainen Caterham 1m21.518s +2.957 139 Laps
12 De la Rosa HRT 1m22.128s +3.567 64 Laps

The F2012 features a number of wholesale technical departures compared to last year’s disappointing challenger, notably pull-rod front and rear suspensions along with fundamental changes towards the rear of the car.

Although the team’s recent cars have proved disappointing, Ferrari has nonetheless often been consistently at the sharp end of the winter testing timesheets with its cars invariably proving reliable out of the box.

On Monday at Jerez Felipe Massa, carrying out the programme for the first two days of the test, completed 69 laps in a best time that was over two seconds off the initial pace set by Kimi Raikkonen in the new Lotus. But Nikolas Tombazis, Ferrari’s chief designer, said that with the new car featuring a number of new concepts the team will be more than ever focusing on data gathering and experimenting with different set-up solutions initially to establish a way forward for development.

“This car represents a clear break with the one that preceded it and it features concepts that are very different for us and that require much more fine tuning,” he said. “That’s why today we absolutely did not have an eye on the stopwatch, preferring to concentrate on gathering as much data as possible in order to get as good an understanding as possible of the behaviour of the car. We have much to do, but all in all, there are reasons to be pleased with the three hundred kilometres that we put together with Felipe at the wheel.

“We had to experiment with different solutions and that will be the case for the next few days as well: it’s obvious that some delivered what was expected while others did not, but that’s the purpose of testing, getting to understand how a car behaves and how best to develop it.”

He also said, that whatever the ultimate performance of the F2012 once the season gets underway, Ferrari certainly couldn’t again be accused of being too conservative with the design of its new car.

“We decided that the only way to make a step forward was to be much more aggressive in our approach to the design of the car,” Tombazis added. “It’s true that the arrival of Pat [Fry] in the role of Technical Director made a significant contribution to this change, but it was a direction our group had already initiated. It is obviously too early to say if this year we will be able to win or not, but no one will be able to accuse us of having been timid in the design of this car.”

In total there were 11 teams running in Jerez, with only Marussia not present. Most teams were giving their new cars a debut outing, however both Mercedes and HRT were running 2011 specification cars. Both Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher got a chance to run in the Mercedes today.

Raikkonen wanted to start strongly and send out a positive message and he certainly did that; he was straight into the groove, after his two day outing in Valencia in an old Renault F1 car recently. His time of 1m19.670s was competitive and he set the pace for most of the day in the new Lotus Renault E20, but Force India’s Paul di Resta ran him close. The Scot had an encouraging day with over 100 laps covered in the new Force India car, which was shaken down at Silverstone on Friday.

Also putting in a solid mileage was the new Sauber C31, with Kamui Kobayashi covering the highest mileage of the day with 106 laps, pretty impressive for a brand new car.

Caterham’s new car had a few Day 1 niggles including a starter shaft problem which meant they had trouble getting the engine started as well as a cooling issue, and the new Toro Rosso stopped out on track with Dan Ricciado at the wheel due to an oil pressure problem.

Times are secondary at this stage to mileage, but nevertheless the pace was pretty strong for Day 1. Last year Felipe Massa set the fastest time on Day 1 in Jerez with 1m 20.709s, a second slower than this year. And last year Jerez was the second test after a session at Valencia, so the cars were more sorted.

The Pirelli tyres are a step softer this year, but against that the cars have lost a lot of downforce from the banning of blown diffusers.

Jerez test: Day 1
1. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus 1m19.670s 73 Laps
2. Paul di Resta Force India 1m19.772s + 0.102 101 Laps
3. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m20.219s + 0.549 56 Laps
4. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m20.496s + 0.826 53 Laps
5. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1m20.694s + 1.024 57 Laps
6. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m20.794s + 1.124 41 Laps
7. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 1m21.353s + 1.683 106 Laps
8. Jenson Button McLaren 1m21.530s + 1.860 60 Laps
9. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m22.815s + 3.145 69 Laps
10. Heikki Kovalainen Caterham 1m23.178s + 3.508 28 Laps
11. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m23.371s + 3.701 25 Laps
11. Pedro de la Rosa HRT 1m23.676s + 4.006 44 Laps

That’s it now for testing until after December- following the final race in Brazil.

The feeling is that Red Bull has the edge going into the first race, with Ferrari close behind and Mercedes came through the ranks to close up quite a bit of the second deficit they had to the front runners at the final test.

Nico Rosberg ends the week with a positive frame of mind after the improvement shown by the update package this week.

“We are on the up for sure, and all credit to the team for getting the upgrades on the car and, most importantly, to see that they are working as expected,” he said.

McLaren have work still to do, after another difficult week, while Renault leads the midfield runners, who are all pretty close together and the pecking order will be interesting to see in Melbourne and Sepang.

From Pirelli’s point of view the testing has now covered almost 100,000 miles and lasted seven months since they first turned a wheel at a private test.

According to them Ferrari has covered the greatest mileage with 5244 kilometres covered over the course of the 15 days running, then Mercedes (4483), Red Bull (4407), Sauber (4099), Williams (3894), McLaren (3844), Force India (3745), Toro Rosso (3737), Lotus Renault (3700), Virgin (3361) Lotus (2403) and HRT (1949).

Sauber did the biggest mileage of this final week, which was hastily put together after the cancellation of the Bahrain test and GP.

“Fernando Alonso has driven the most distance on Pirelli tyres with a total of 2826 kilometres, ahead of Michael Schumacher (2474), Felipe Massa (2417), Mark Webber (2373), Rubens Barrichello (2198) and Sergio Perez (2129),” said a Pirelli statement.

Pirelli’s Paul Hembery was on the defensive this week after some comments from drivers about the dry and wet tyres, but he stuck to his line that their tyres will make for more exciting racing, “Pirelli will respond to the requests from the FOTA and we can do all the modifications necessary, ” he said. “But for the choice of tyre they must not last more than 30 laps. From our calculations we are looking at between 2 and 4 pit stops. Just think what an advantage it will be to be able to do one pit stop less (than your rival).” A point I was making in my post at the end of the last Barcelona test.

Meanwhile HRT did not run its new car today, due to problems with parts stuck in customs, which all sounds very odd. So they will have to start from zero in Melbourne. Gazzetta dello Sport spoke to Tonio Liuzzi and has reported that the team’s budget for the season is between €45-50 million, a similar budget to Virgin Racing, but which is still a fortune to compete at the back.

Schumacher gets on it (Photo: Mercedes)

The team has been bringing the new update parts to the car in stages this week with exhausts and various aerodynamic parts, including a new front wing, being added until today it ran in final spec for the first time. The results looked pretty good, not only in terms of headline speed but also on longer runs,

“We have been developing the car step-by-step this week with new parts arriving each day, ” said Schumacher. “So our focus today has been on understanding how to get the best from the car now that it is pretty much in its final configuration for the first time. The car has behaved as we expected and it’s been a very productive day.”

Red Bull finished their winter test programme without putting their cards on the table in terms of outright speed, not bothering to do a full qualifying simulation. The same is true of Ferrari. We will have to wait until Saturday in Melbourne

McLaren's measuring device (Photo: McLaren)

McLaren had another frustrating day for Jenson Button, the 2009 champion had to sit out while an engine was changed and managed just 57 laps on the day. The team once again was using its load sensor device on the front wing, to evaluate front wing flex. Unlike many of the drivers, he did not do a low fuel run today.

Ferrari did another 140 laps today with Fernando Alonso, the quickest being 1m21.614.

Hispania unveiled its new car in the Barcelona pit lane, but a problem with supply of parts prevented it from going out. The team hoped to shake it down tomorrow on the final day of running, but announced tonight that it will not be able to as parts are held up in customs.

Team principal Colin Kolles pointed to the experience of his drivers Tonio Liuzzi and Narain Kartikeyan as well as the technical partnership with Williams for gearbox, hydraulics and rear end as reasons to believe that the team will be a good step ahead of last season. He also promised a development programme on the car, which they didn’t have last year.

Apart from time to sort the basics of the car like cooling, electronics and so on, the team have not had the track time to learn about the Pirelli tyres, every time the other teams have gone out they have managed to get the tyres to last a little longer; Rubens Barrichello did two runs of 14 laps and 12 laps with only a second in drop off, although they were laps in the low 1m30s. The car later required an engine change meaning that once again, Pastor Maldonado’s mileage was restricted.

Mike Gascoyne tweeted that the Lotus almost got 20 laps out of a set of hard tyres today, a little more than before.

Photo: Team Lotus

Lotus announced this evening that the Air Asia GP2 drivers Luiz Razia and Davide Valsecchi will also be reserve drivers for the team and will have the chance to run in Friday practice at Grands Prix.

So that’s it for testing for most of the teams, including Red Bull, leaving just Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari, Williams and Hispania to run in the rain tomorrow.

BARCELONA TEST, DAY 4

1. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1:21.268 67 laps
2. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:21.614 140 laps
3. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:21.788 22 laps
4. Nick Heidfeld Lotus Renault 1:22.073 67 laps
5. Rubens Barrichello Williams 1:22.233 89 laps
6. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 1:22.315 98 laps
7. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1:22.675 72 laps
8. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1:22.933 63 laps
9. Heikki Kovalainen Team Lotus 1:23.437 138 laps
10. Paul Di Resta Force India 1:23.653 42 laps
11. Adrian Sutil Force India 1:23.921 26 laps
12. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1:24.108 11 laps
13. Jenson Button McLaren 1:25.837 57 laps
14. Jerome D’Ambrosio Marussia Virgin 1:27.375 46 laps

Track temperatures of over 30 were welcomed by Pirelli and the teams today. Meanwhile rain forecast for Saturday will not help the teams much, although it will be useful to Pirelli in learning more about the intermediate and wet tyres.

Photo: Sauber

“This was the first time for Sergio to go through all those procedures from Q1 to Q3,” said Sauber technical director James Key. “He did a good and controlled set of laps, setting a time of 1:22.042 minutes on soft tyres and 1:21.761 on the super soft compound.”

Perez was also quick on the soft tyre, only a couple of tenths slower. Ironically Perez had set a lap on Tuesday in the 1m21s, but it was achieved by cutting the chicane and so was deleted by official timing! Today there was no mistake and it’s a quick time, even if it was a full low fuel qualifying simulation.

Today saw Ferrari again notching up a high mileage, 132 laps in total; Massa had done 100 laps by 3pm. So far this winter almost every day of testing has resulted in over 100 laps, with very few exceptions. He set the second fastest time of the day with a 1m 22.092 on a quali run, but it’s doubtful that the fuel load was comparable, judging from the relative pace we’ve seen from the Sauber and Ferrari in the tests to date.

The Ferrari long run times again look comparable with the Red Bull’s. It was Massa’s last day of testing before the season starts.

For Mercedes, Michael Schumacher’s time of 1m22.892 was set while he was doing a series of short runs, but he did a couple of ten lap runs with very consistent lap times, in the 1m26s and 1m27s, which will have encouraged Mercedes’ engineers. The teams are working hard to make the tyres last a little longer each time they test. Reports suggest that two stops would still be tricky at Barcelona – Massa did four today in a race simulation – but by the time F1 goes back there in a couple of months it might be possible.

Vitaly Petrov was again at the wheel of the Renault. He had a KERS problem in the morning. A similar problem spoiled the race distance run of Perez in the Sauber. It’s interesting that there have been quite a few reliability niggles with KERS for teams this week, as they get more use.

Meanwhile Toro Rosso claim to have carried out over 60 live pit stops in the last two days!

For Lotus, Jarno Trulli drove just six laps in the morning, with a gearbox problem and then a water leak Heikki Kovalainen taking over in the afternoon and he will drive again tomorrow. Lotus hasn’t got a great deal of updates to test this week, there is a new front wing for tomorrow.

McLaren did not run today. They chose to split their four days across the five of the test by taking a day off track in the middle. Yesterday the car was troubled by hydraulic and exhaust issues.

Team principal Martin Whitmarsh told the official F1 site, F1.com today that, despite (and perhaps also because of) the reliability issues, the decision to start testing the new car late has proved the right one as the tyre data gathered on the old car was beneficial,
“That first test proved extremely beneficial in providing us with rich, raw tyre data that we’ve been analyzing ever since,” he said. “So, while I admit that the introduction of the MP4-26 has been affected by a few reliability issues, we still stand by our decision to defer its introduction by one test.”

McLaren scheduled the day off in order to allow delivery time for the final update kit to be tested Friday and Saturday. Every hour on track counts for McLaren at the moment.

Meanwhile Felipe Massa has spoken about the meeting the FIA’s Charlie Whiting last night, “We spoke about the tyres and other new rules for this year, such as the moveable rear wing,” he said on Ferrari.com. “More or less all of us drivers are agreed that there is a need to improve the rain tyres so that they give more grip: if we were to have another race like the one last year in Korea, it would be tough to get to the finish.”

They also spoke about the use of the adjustable rear wing, with some drivers concerned at indiscriminate use in corners during practice and qualifying potentially leading to accidents.

BARCELONA TEST, Day 3
1. Sergio Perez Sauber 1m21.761s 95 laps
2. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m22.092s + 0.331s 132 laps
3. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m22.466s + 0.705s 97 laps
4. Rubens Barrichello Williams 1m22.637s + 0.876s 105
5. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m22.892s + 1.131s 89 laps
6. Nick Heidfeld Renault 1m23.541s + 1.780s 32 laps
7. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus 1m23.990s + 2.229s 40 laps
8. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m24.233s + 2.472s 24 laps
9. Adrian Sutil Force India 1m24.334s + 2.573s 108 laps
10. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1m24.779s + 3.018s 107 laps
11. Jerome D’Ambrosio Virgin 1m27.336s + 5.575s 96 laps
12. Jarno Trulli Lotus-Renault 1m34.485s + 12.724s 6 laps

Photo: Red Bull

Vettel set the time early in the day and then worked on the car on different fuel loads and set-ups. Vettel got back into the 1m 21s on other runs during the day.

Michael Schumacher always used to test this way – go out and set a flat out time at the start and then use that as a benchmark for lap times set on set fuel load, evaluating set up changes as you go. It’s a way of working he got into when he was at Benetton with Pat Symonds and Frank Dernie.

Ferrari was out with it’s updated car, the details of which I posted yesterday. They feature new ultra low exhausts. Felipe Massa was at the wheel, but did not feel tempted to see what his car might manage in similar configuration to Vettel’s. That may or may not come by the end of the week.

Toro Rosso did a race distance today and set the second fastest time with a lap in the low 1m 22s, half a second off Vettel and similar to Red Bull’s time from yesterday. The Toro Rosso certainly has some pace and has made significant improvement since last season.

McLaren had more reliability issues, another hydraulic problem and an exhaust failure among them. He did not manage a race distance run but did set the fourth fastest time in the high 1m 22s, similar to Button’s pace yesterday.

Afterwards Lewis Hamilton told reporters that McLaren has a lot of work to do ” ‘Do I believe I have a car to win the world championship at the moment? I don’t, no,’ ” he said.

“But that doesn’t mean it won’t become a world championship-winning car. In terms of how long we can go in terms of reliability and our true pace, that’s an unknown factor for us because in the time we have had we’ve not been able to maximise things.”

Today the team announced that Perdo de la Rosa, has rejoined them as test driver, a role he had for many years before returning briefly to a race seat with Sauber last year. De la Rosa is valued for his engineering ability by team principal Martin Whitmarsh in particular.

Mercedes ran their new exhaust package and new bodywork, the results from which were “in line with expectations” according to the team, “I think we have some impressive developments, “said Nico Rosberg, “Even though we couldn’t test or show the full performance today as not all of the elements are on the car and working together yet. We had glimpses that showed that the full package should be a big step.” Team principal Ross Brawn indicated last week that the car had been around a second a lap off the pace in the early tests.

Williams also had a poor day’s running after a KERS fault in the morning, which required extensive repairs. Meanwhile Paul di Resta simulated a race weekend for Force India, with qualifying laps in the morning session and a full race distance in the afternoon, punctuated with proper full speed pit stops. Di Resta is making his debut in Australia in two weeks.

Tonight the drivers are meeting with the FIA’s Charlie Whiting to talk through the adjustable rear wings, give him their learnings so far and discuss safety. There have been concerns voiced about the safety of the devices, especially on wet days, with Rubens Barrichello arguing over the winter that there could be a case for disabling the device when the track is wet, to avoid sudden changes of downforce level on a slippery track.

BARCELONA TEST, Day 2
1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1m21.865s 112 laps
2. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso 1m22.396s + 0.531s 120 laps
3. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m22.670s + 0.805s 116 laps
4. Lewis Hamilton McLaren 1m22.888s + 1.023s 57 laps
5. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m23.324s + 1.459s 101 laps
6. Paul di Resta Force India 1m24.334s + 2.469s 118 laps
7. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 1m24.436s + 2.571s 107 laps
8. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m25.807s + 3.942s 100 laps
9. Jarno Trulli Lotus-Renault 1m26.090s + 4.225s 98 laps
10. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m26.989s + 5.124s 29 laps
11. Jerome D’Ambrosio Virgin 1m28.982s + 7.117s 64 laps