Mark Webber set the fastest time, but the headline lap times are not really important at this stage, that will come in the later stages of the test when we start to get the low fuel qualifying specials.

What was interesting today was that the teams were working hard on the adjustable front wings which have become a crucial device on the long runs with heavy fuel loads.

Since last season, the rules have permitted an adjustable front wing flap. Last year people didn’t really use them much, except perhaps when following another car closely so as not to lose downforce.

But this year they are a useful weapon to prolong tyre life as the driver can trim the car during the course of the long 45 to 50 lap stints we are seeing. Ferrari has this really worked out well already, as we saw in Jerez last week. McLaren was working on it today as were Renault and others.

In these colder conditions the tyres are graining more than one would expect them to in Bahrain, so it’s hard for the teams to know exactly where they stand, but they can only work with what’s in front of them.

Today the rear tyres were going off and drivers were trying to minimise that with the front wing flaps. When the rears started to go, I’m told it was very noticeable in the high speed corners, like Turn 3, that the cars were very twitchy, the Sauber being the most extreme example.

Most drivers worked on the soft Bridgestone tyre today, with only Webber and Hulkenberg trying the super soft. Webber did not go any faster on his short run on super soft than he had on the soft. He stopped at one point for a precautionary gearbox change.

“Obviously we put some new parts on the car which helped a lot – and of course the car wasn’t in its heaviest form in terms of fuel,” Webber said. “Ok, we used a lot of performance today to get the lap time, but we’re still looking to improve before Bahrain. “We still have problems, so we are not going on holiday tonight. We have more work to do, and we’re still improving this car.”

Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg did 107 laps and afterwards said that the team would not make a leap in performance this week, but more likely in Bahrain where it will have a significant upgrade,
“It’s difficult to say exactly where we are,” Rosberg said. “I think it’s very close at the front, but that could all change again for Bahrain because the update we have is such a big step.”

Teams practiced pit stops and it looks like we will see stops of around 3 seconds this year, now that there is no refuelling. Pit crews have been doing a lot of fitness training in preparation for the season and now the serious drills start. It will be crucial as there is an advantage to be gained by pitting first in a straight race this year and every second will count.

There are plenty of new aerodynamic parts being bolted onto the cars. I’m told Williams took delivery of a new floor this evening which they will try tomorrow.

Ferrari has a new chassis, the third, on duty this week.

Be sure to follow all the action tomorrow, with Tweets, photos and insights on our Twitter aggregator JA on F1 Tweets Live from Barcelona

Headline Lap Times – Barcelona Day 1

1. Mark Webber Red Bull 1:21.487 109
2. Nico Hulkenberg Williams 1:22.407 82
3. Nico Rosberg Mercedes GP 1:22.514 107
4. Pedro De La Rosa BMW Sauber 1:23.144 73
5. Jenson Button Vodafone McLaren Mercedes 1:23.452 101
6. Tonio Liuzzi Force India 1:24.064 65
7. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:24.170 74
8. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1:24.173 74
9. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1:24.869 111
10. Lucas Di Grassi Virgin Racing 1:27.057 31
11. Fairuz Fauzy Lotus 1:28.002 76

The four day test is the final chance for the teams to test out new developments before the first race in Bahrain on 14 March.

The first two tests were largely about proving reliability, while the more advanced teams started to push the performance side a lot more in Jerez last week.

For this week a wide range of new aerodynamic upgrades is expected. Teams like McLaren and Ferrari have produced significant packages of top body, floor, engine cover and so on, primarily aerodynamic steps as it seems from talking to the engineers that aero is still the big area of growth potential, despite all the cut backs. These steps should be worth significant chunks of lap time.

This will inevitably mean that the pecking order, which started to appear last week in Jerez, might get reshuffled a bit. We saw very little low fuel running last week, most teams set their fastest time with around 50 kilos of fuel in the car. This week we will see a mixture of high fuel running, ie the full 150/160 kilos they will start the race with and some very obvious low fuel qualifying runs, where the headline lap times will come.

From this we should see who has the best long run performance for the races and who has the best qualifying performance. This year a car is required to have both and this is a difficult balance to strike, because you are asking your car to be hard on the tyres for a single lap in qualifying and then without being able to change the set up, be gentle on the tyres for the race.

It will be particularly interesting to look at McLaren, where Lewis Hamilton’s style naturally leans on a tyre, which will be good for qualifying, whereas Jenson Button is more smooth, so switching the tyre on for qualifying will be his challenge.

Both are high quality experienced drivers so they should be able to adapt, but there may be a difference between them in this area at this stage. It will not be easy to compare as they will be running on different days and track conditions change a lot at Barcelona from day to day.

Most engineers I have spoken to agree that prioritising qualifying is the right thing to do this year, but if you go too far down that line you may end up wrecking your tyres in the race and get overtaken in the closing stages. Being able to trim the car as the race unfolds, using the front win adjusters, will be important for maintaining tyre performance and that is something we will see a lot of this week.

You can follow all the action from Barcelona live on our Twitter aggregator, which pulls in the best of the Tweets from teams, drivers and journalists at the test JA on F1 Tweets Live from Barcelona

Or if you are on a work intranet which blocks Twitter, use our new service JA on F1 Tweets Live from Barcelona – Intranet

The same happened last year in the pre season tests, but this year it’s even more critical because there is so little track time available.

For Virgin, Red Bull and Force India, who are running their cars for the first time it’s a frustrating week. Frustrating also for Nico Rosberg who somehow seems to have ended up getting the wet days this week, while team mate Michael Schumacher slotted in for the dry day on Thursday.

Looking at the times from the dry running on Thursday, it’s still tricky to say with any certainty who is on top, because what is becoming clearer from talking to the engineers is that the field is pretty competitive at the front with only very small gaps in performance between the teams. They have a pretty good idea how much fuel each other is carrying and say that only a small variation in fuel loads would be enough to distort the true picture.

It is beginning to look like we might be in for the season everyone is hoping for, with several teams capable of winning. At this stage there is no team which looks to be a step ahead of the others. Beyond that, until they all go for a low fuel new tyre qualifying simulation it is hard to discern who is a tenth ahead or a tenth behind.

All the front runners are managing expectations too; not wanting to be branded the pace setter at this stage of the game. Observers tell me it was fascinating to see Alonso, Schumacher and Button all sizing each other up out on the track. Throw in Hamilton, Massa, Vettel, Rosberg and Webber to that mix and we really are in for a treat this season.

Alonso’s 46 lap long run yesterday was interesting. He started out on new tyres with at least 120 kilos of fuel in the car and was quick initially, with a lap in the 1m 23s, then the pace dropped off for a few laps, but then the final part of the run was very fast. His final lap was 1.9 secs faster than his first but he had burned off 120 kilos of fuel worth around 3 seconds par lap.

Schumacher did a 32 lap run on a new set of the same tyres, which started out in the low 1m25s and came down through the 1m 24s steadily. His final lap was 1.9 secs faster than his first. So he had burned off approximately 80 kilos of fuel, which is worth around 2.4 seconds per lap.

Most of the Friday running was on wet and intermediate tyres. However the dry running has been on the new soft and medium Bridgestone compounds.

Williams have had a few reliability issues with its car, but the engine so far has been fine. I understand that this is the same engine they have been using since the start of testing in Valencia and it is now well beyond its normal life and they are seeing how far it will go.

There are some positive noises coming out of Cosworth. They believe that they have as good a combination of power and fuel efficiency as any other engine out there. Time will tell.

Virgin received the spare parts they needed to get the car mobile again after the front wing failure on Thursday. The car managed just four laps on Friday.
“It was so wet this afternoon that we and all the other teams lost a lot of running later in the session when we were finally able to get going, “said Nick Wirth. “This was particularly annoying given the great efforts by Wirth Research who, rather than just dispatching existing parts from our Bicester base, designed and manufactured new parts.”

Meanwhile Sebastian Vettel had his first run in the new Red Bull car, the last of the front running drivers to get his hands on 2010 machinery.

After remarkable reliability in the first test at Valencia, today several teams lost time due to technical problems. The most extreme of these was Virgin Racing, which managed just 11 laps before the front wing came off. The team called a halt to testing for the day, pending some reinforcements from the factory in Oxfordshire.

Technical director Nick Wirth said, “This morning we experienced a front wing mounting problem which caused the wing to come off the car at the beginning of a run. The cause has already been identified. Unfortunately, we’re missing one or two spare parts which will hopefully arrive this evening, so we won’t be able to run for the rest of the day. In the short amount of running that we’ve achieved so far, we are very encouraged by what we’ve seen and we have gathered some vital aero data which is very much in the range of what we were predicting. We look forward to resuming the programme tomorrow morning.”

The team says that they expect to be back out on track tomorrow afternoon. They were reluctant to “risk” the car in yesterday’s rain, but as time is running out, they will probably be forced to send it out tomorrow to get some mileage.

Williams also lost time today due to a hydraulic problem in the morning and a driveshaft issue in the afternoon. Nevertheless Nico Hulkenberg covered 67 laps. At one stage this morning he set the fastest time through the sped trap, which wasn’t in the script as Williams’ drivers are generally running quite conservatively, particularly on the new Cosworth engine.

There is a quiet confidence about the performance potential of this package. One area of concern however is likely to be the exhausts of this car, as Williams had a lot of failures in this area the last time they used Cosworth engines. Williams make the exhausts themselves and this year they will be called upon to run very hot at times when the engine is being run lean for fuel saving reasons.

McLaren also had some reliability issues with Jenson Button stopping late on in the day due to “a warning light in the cockpit” according to McLaren. Nevertheless the world champion says he is now comfortable in the car and had a more positive experience than in Valencia.

Fastest today was Kamui Kobayashi in the Sauber, a time set right at the end of the day on low fuel after he had spent most of the day on high fuel loads. Sebastien Buemi in the Toro Rosso was second fastest. But it was the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso which caught the eye with a long run of 48 laps at a very strong pace.

“We’re really satisfied with what we’ve done during these two days, ” said Alonso. “We’ve driven many kilometres without any reliability problems, which is something that makes me really happy. We put many components under pressure over these five days and we didn’t have any problems at all.” He added that the car is “very easy to drive”. He now hands it over to Felipe Massa.

Michael Schumacher had a busy day in what may turn out to be the only dry day for Mercedes, covering a race simulation in the afternoon.

Red Bull and Force India both had their first day of dry running with their new car. Force India seemed the happier of the two. The car seems to be living up to expectations and like last year’s car it is slippery in a straight line. It was the fastest car through the speed trap today. Mark Webber covered 99 laps in the Red Bull and gave the car a cautious thumbs up, “We’ve still got quite a bit of testing to go before we get to Bahrain, which we are going to need to continue to understand the car and to find performance. We are off to a pretty solid start and we’ve got a great base to build on.”

Most teams have started to work on set up and are beginning to push the performance envelope. New specification Bridgestone tyres are being used in Jerez, which puts a greater strain on the tyres than Valencia.

Vitaly Petrov was replaced by Robert Kubica today, giving rise to rumours to that the Russian’s funding was in trouble. But the team says that Petrov will be back in the car again tomorrow, when more rain is forecast. Chief engineer Alan Permane described today as “very productive.”

Tomorrow many of the drivers will swap over and the line up will be as follows:
Red Bull – Vettel
Renault – Petrov
Mercedes – Rosberg
McLaren – Hamilton
Force India – Sutil
Williams – Barrichello
Ferrari – Massa
Toro Rosso – Alguersuari
Sauber – De la Rosa

THURSDAY TIMES
1. Kobayashi BMW-Sauber 1:19.950 103
2. Buemi Toro Rosso Ferrari 1:20.026 121
3. Button McLaren-Mercedes 1:20.618 83
4. Hulkenberg Williams-Cosworth 1:20.629 67
5. Liuzzi Force India- Mercedes 1:20.754 80
6. M.Schumacher Mercedes GP 1:21.083 124
7. Alonso Ferrari 1:21.424 129
8. Kubica Renault 1:22.003 103
9. Webber Red Bull-Renault 1:22.043 99
10. Glock Virgin-Cosworth 1:29.964 11

On a historic final day of this first test, there were three world champions on track with Michael Schumacher and Jenson Button also getting a feel for the Mercedes and McLaren respectively.

“It was an important day for me, first time in a Ferrari,” said Alonso. “A very emotional day this morning and also last night. I think I maximised the day in terms of laps and time on the track and I feel good.

A historic day for Alonso and Ferrari

The Ferrari has tended to focus this week on shorter runs of 10-20 laps on the whole. Alonso and Massa both did plenty of laps in the 1m 11s range, unlike their rivals, but there was no sign of anyone going for outright lap times on low fuel. Most people seem to have been working on reliability this week. In the refueling era tests like this would be conducted on a two stop fuel load, say 50-60 kilos. Now with no refueling it makes sense to test at a mid level load, based on a one stop plan, so 80-100 kilos and that is what has been happening.

Perhaps next week at Jerez we will start to see some teams pushing the performance envelope a little and we will see the outright pace of some cars on low fuel. We will also see the new cars from Force India, which shook down at Silverstone today as well as the new Virgin car and the one we all want to see, the Red Bull.

“I think at the next test we might have more of an understanding when people are running very different fuel loads, ” said Jenson Button. “And you can get an understanding of the difference of those loads and how much time per 10 kilos it is. Then you can work out who is quick and who isn’t.”

Button admitted that the Ferrari is “quick,” but added the caveat, “we don’t know how quick”.

It’s been an encouarging week for Ferrari and the stories about poor downforce figures seem to have gone quiet for the moment. Alonso’s time today was set on the fourth lap of a 12 lap run.

The Ferrari’s long run times look very consistent; Alonso did a 16 lap run in the late afternoon, which started out in the low 1m 13s and gradually came down smoothly and consistently to the high 1m 11s, which is roughly the difference in fuel weight, so the car seems to be well balanced and looks after its tyres pretty well.

The tyres being used in Valencia were the new soft and supersoft Bridgestones.

The BMW Sauber has been very consistent all week, with both Kobayashi and De la Rosa setting times in the low 1m 12s on largely short runs of 8-10 laps at a time. The car managed 1,000 km of running and it seems to respond well to changes, which is positive.

We have quite a variation in the length of cars this season with the McLaren, BMW Sauber and Ferrari at the longer end of the scale and the Renault and Williams shorter. It appears that the longer cars are working better, but it’s early days yet and hard to draw conclusions.

The old firm; back and meaning business

This time last year Jenson Button could barely wipe the smile off his face; on his first day in the Brawn he already knew he had a car he could fight for the championship with. Clearly the shift to a new team and the lack of reference points is making him more guarded this time, but he didn’t have a great start today, by all accounts spending quite a bit of time in the morning getting comfortable in the car.

And he certainly wasn’t raving when he said, “From Lewis’s comments yesterday he is happy, we all want more. That’s the way we are, but we have a good base to work with.” He set his fastest time, a 1m 12.9 on the final lap of a nine lap run. With more fuel on board later on he was lapping in the high 1m 13s and low 1m 14s.

McLaren have been on a different programme from Ferrari and Sauber. McLaren have been doing runs of 20-25 laps at a time, which means that they have had at least 60-80 kilos on board. There has been no sign of a push to find the pace of the car.

Last year’s GP2 front runners, Nico Hulkenberg and Vitaly Petrov were out today for Williams and Renault respectively. Williams continued their conservative progress with the new Cosworth engine, while Petrov got used to the car.

HEADLINE LAP TIMES, VALENCIA, DAY 3

1. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:11.470 127 Laps
2. Pedro De La Rosa BMW Sauber 1:12.094 80
3. Michael Schumacher Mercedes GP 1:12.438 82
4. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1:12.576 97
5. Jenson Button Vodafone McLaren Mercedes 1:12.951 82
6. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1:13.097 75
7. Nico Hulkenberg Williams 1:13.669 126

Although there are still 40 days to go to the first Grand Prix in Bahrain, the new season kicked off in style with a frantic day of car launches and testing in Valencia.

We had first sight today of new cars from Toro Rosso, Williams and the Mercedes W01, the keenly awaited follow up to the championship winning Brawn. Michael Schumacher took the wheel in the afternoon for his first laps in a contemporary F1 car since the end of 2006.

Missing from the test this week are Red Bull, Force India and the new teams.

Most attention, inevitably, was on Schumacher and his return to F1 action. He quickly got down to work in the afternoon, having taken over the car from his new team mate Nico Rosberg and he went faster after just 18 laps. Rosberg had complained of sitting too low in the car and not being able to see out properly.

Rosberg did the initial installation laps and his best long run was at the end of his time in the car and his laps mainly in the high 1m 13s and low 1m 14s. Schumacher was on that pace straight away and in his final long run he was lapping in the low 1m13s and high 1m12s. Afterwards he was bright and breezy,

“I felt totally comfortable and really had a feeling that everything was very natural,” he said. “It felt just like at the very beginning of my career in 1991 when on the first lap, I thought ‘wow that was really fast’ and then on the second lap, I was just extremely excited. I feel like a young boy again and really enjoyed myself out there.”

Although it looks today as though Schumacher was faster, it will be a fairer comparison over the next two days when both drivers get more time with the car.

With new rules meaning that the cars will have to race with 160 kilos of fuel on board it is harder than in the past to decode the lap times, because the range of possible fuel weights is greater.

My understanding is that the front running teams will settle into a routine of running around 80 kilos of fuel, half full tanks, for their long runs to develop the car. Teams looking for sponsors or otherwise trying to catch the eye will be running around 40 kilos at times, a difference worth around 1.5 seconds per lap. This is something to watch out for over the four test sessions this month.

It will be very obvious all round when a time has been set on low fuel and new tyres.

The other comeback king, Felipe Massa, was fastest today in the new Ferrari. He set a time of 1m12.574 on the 14th lap of a 16 lap run and managed an impressive 102 laps. His long runs looked pretty good. He did one early on in the mid to low 1m 13s and later on did a ten lap run in the low 1m 13s. The car looks like it reacts well to changes.

“The car behaved very well, said Massa. “I felt it was an easier car to drive compared to last year’s. Last year it was always difficult to find the balance.”

It was a positive start for Ferrari. There have been rumours about the aero figures being poor and a B spec car being prepared. But my sources suggest that what has happened is that they recruited a new head of aerodynamics from Toyota in December and he brought a solution for a radical new diffuser with a hole the size of a sheet of A3 paper! It’s worth a lot in extra downforce and so Ferrari may well be building an update package around it, possibly for the first race if they can build it in time.

McLaren had Gary Paffett at the wheel for the first day, tomorrow it will be Lewis Hamilton and on Wednesday Jenson Button.

Paffett took the radical looking McLaren around 86 laps and set a fastest time of 1m 13.8s. Most of the long runs looked like they were run on heavy fuel, there was one long run in the middle of the day when he lapped mainly in the low 1m 14s to high 1m 13s.

Pedro de la Rosa managed 74 laps in the new Sauber-Ferrari and said, “The car was reliable right from the beginning, which meant we could follow our programme perfectly without wasting any time. Also the car reacted to our changes very well.”

His long runs were varied, the fastest in the middle of the day was a ten lap run in which his times compared with the Ferrari, but I would guess that he was running less fuel for that run.

Renault did not set any eye catching lap times in their new car today, but they covered 69 laps with Robert Kubica at the wheel.
“Tomorrow we will start working on the balance and trying to understand the car a bit more, ” said Kubica. “The narrower front tyres certainly had an impact on the car, but it’s difficult for me to judge as this is the first time I’ve driven the R30.”

Likewise, Williams looked like they were struggling a bit early on, but Rubens Barrichello covered 74 laps and set his best time on the fifth lap of a seven lap run. Barrichello brought out the only red flag of the day when he stopped out on track due to a software problem on the throttle system.

Sebastien Buemi managed just 18 laps in the new Toro Rosso, losing a lot of time to a gearbox control problem. This is the first car that the team has designed and built by itself, having relied on a car from Red Bull Technologies until now. Technical director Giorgio Ascanelli managed expectations today when he said that it was inevitable that there would be mistakes in this fledgling technical operation.

The action is about to start again (Photo:Darren Heath)

The tests are open to the public and it’s a very good value way of seeing plenty of F1 action.

The Valencia test runs from February 1-3 at the Riccardo Tormo circuit, which is not the same as the street circuit used for the F1 Grand Prix. A one day pass for the grandstands is only €10.

Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg will drive the new Mercedes car and there will also be the new car from McLaren, with Gary Paffett driving on the first day, Lewis Hamilton the second day and Jenson Button on Day 3. Ferrari will be there with Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso, as will BMW Sauber with Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi.

Williams will be there from the start of the test with Rubens Barrichello, who will drive days one and two and Nico Hulkenberg, who will drive on day three. This will be a return to the track for Cosworth engines after a three year absence.

The new Renault car will be launched on Sunday and should be out on track next week, with Robert Kubica at the wheel and it looks increasingly likely that Vitaly Petrov will be the other driver. Kubica is likely to be given the lion’s share of the testing time, to maximise performance development. Meanwhile Toro Rosso launch their car on 1 February and will have Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari on track in Valencia.

However the Red Bull team will not be in Valencia, they are taking the extra time in the wind-tunnel and will launch their car on 10 February in Jerez. The second official test at Jerez runs from 10-13 February. Entry is a mere €5 per person.

Also making their debut in the second test are Force India. This is planned, the team has confidence in the reliability of the car, thanks to the engine and gearbox package from McLaren and Mercedes, so they too are going for the extra time in the wind tunnel and restricting themselves to 12 days of testing. Along with Red Bull, Force India are one of the teams with the greatest continuity from last year to this in terms of management, drivers and technical package. Having come good in the second half of 2009, they could be worth keeping an eye on this season.

This test should see the debut of Virgin Racing, with Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi.

A week later the cars will be running in the third test, again at Jerez and this time Lotus will join in with Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen. At present the Campos team has yet to confirm its presence at any tests. It has been reported by AP that the team may miss the tests altogether and run for the first time in Bahrain. A shortage of funding appears to be the problem here and it seems that until more funding is found, progress is going to be difficult. “Bahrain is a test for us, ” a team official is quoted as saying.

The fourth and final official test takes place at Barcelona on 25-28 February, making a maximum available total of 15 days testing before the season starts. This very limited programme is the reason why most of the top teams have worked hard to ensure that their car is out on day one in Valencia.

USF1 will carry out its testing at Barber Motorsport park in Alabama, on dates to be confirmed in February. Argentine Jose Maria Lopez will drive the car; he was announced today as the team’s first driver.