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

The specialist pre-season training camp, in sunnier climes to the traditional northern European winter, has long been a staple of many teams’ preparations ahead of a new season, giving them the chance to put their drivers through some rigorous exercises as well as providing an opportunity for team building.

Ferrari have chosen the Canary island for their training camp in recent days, with race drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa being joined in the activities by Academy drivers Jules Bianchi – who last week was confirmed as Force India’s reserve driver for 2012 – and Italian GP2 runner Davide Rigon.

The Maranello outfit say activities have included mountain biking, football, tennis and canoeing, along with more general work outs in the gym and on the beach.

But having enjoyed temperatures of 20+ degrees in Lanzarote, Alonso and Massa are set for something of a culture shock on their return to Italy ahead of Friday’s launch at Fiorano with the Maranello area currently suffering from freezing conditions with a high likelihood of snow for the forthcoming days.

Ferrari admit the forecast for poor weather could scupper plans to run the 2012 car for the first time at their test track for filming purposes before their transporters set off for the first test at Jerez in southern Spain.

The inaugural run could therefore be delayed until the opening day of testing next Tuesday, when Ferrari have confirmed Massa will get the honour of driving the car first in an official session.

The Spaniard, now 30 years old, met his wife Raquel de Rosario in late 2005 and married a year later, just after he clinched his second world title.

Apparently the pair have been separated for some months, they were last seen together at a Grand Prix in Hungary in late July, where Alonso celebrated his 30th birthday.

The private life of F1 drivers has been very much a talking point this season with Lewis Hamilton very publicly splitting with girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger and then in Brazil wearing a necklace she gave him following a reconciliation.

Alonso, in contrast, has kept his personal difficulties behind closed doors and there is no sign that it affected his performances in 2011, in fact towards the end of the season he put in some of his most impressive ‘fighting’ drives.

Meanwhile the Spaniard has been talking up Ferrari’s chances for next season, saying that Red Bull have little room for development of their car, whereas Ferrari has got on top of its windtunnel problems and is able to improve by more than its Austrian rival.

“I think we are going to go up,” he said in a Santander press conference. “We had aerodynamic problems when the windtunnel wasn’t working well. We had a different philosophy to adapt to the Pirellis, a different philosophy for the suspension and many other things. So we have a big margin to improve.

“So I think they (Red Bull) will improve by X per cent, and we are going to improve by X times two, so it’s all going to be much closer.”

Alonso has spent a fair bit of time at Maranello lately and is clearly very focussed on hitting the ground running in 2012. Both of his world titles were won thanks to a great start to the season and in recent years it has been vital to start well – only 2010 stands out as the exception, where Vettel lost ground before winning at the last race.

The pressure is on Ferrari technical director Pat Fry and his team to give the team a big step forward. It is a time for strong leadership and clear thinking. And with everyone looking for the new ‘trick’ on the technical side that others will be forced to copy, all eyes will be on Ferrari who have not set the agenda on the design side since the days of Rory Byrne in the mid 2000s.

Alonso has proved time and again that if you give him the car, he will get the job done. And after five seasons without adding the third title he so desperately wants to equal his idol Ayrton Senna, he is as hungry as any driver out there at the moment.

Alonso also welcomed the return to F1 of Kimi Raikkonen. Ironically the last time the pair raced each other Alonso was with the Enstone based Renault team and Raikkonen was at Ferrari. In 2012 the roles will be reversed.

“I welcome him back because he’s a great driver,” Alonso said “He is one of the most talented drivers out there as well as being a World Champion and a nice person, so it will be a pleasure to have him back.

“There is something different about starting a race with Kimi alongside you, rather than any other young driver. Fighting with people like him gives you a greater sense of security.”

“I have great respect for him, he’s one of the greatest or the greatest in our sport,” said Alonso. “The numbers are there and impossible to repeat for us. It’s been a great pleasure to drive with him all these years. I will always remember all the battles with him. It was a priviledge to drive against Michael Schumacher.

“He decided to stop and then come back and now the car is not competitive enough for him to win races, but I’m sure he is still enjoying. There are some criticisms about his results now but I don’t agree with them. Michael was watching the races at home three years ago, now he’s seventh or ninth, but I’m sure he is happy every morning because he is racing in F1. It’s what he wants to do; he’s a driver.

“Twenty years are a lot. If I think of myself it would be 2021 and I don’t think I can do that! I want to congratulate him for these 20 years and tell him it’s a pleasure to race against him.”

The Spaniard wasn’t always so gushing. In 2006 when Schumacher spun during qualifying in Monaco, preventing his rival from taking pole from him, Alonso told Mark Webber at dinner that if the stewards did not punish Schumacher he would lie down on the grid in front of Schumacher’s car to symbolise that the German “rides all over the other drivers”.

In the event this was not necessary as the stewards ruled that Schumacher had spun on purpose and put him at the back of the grid.

Perhaps thinking of this and other moments he wishes hadn’t happened, Schumacher was in philosophical mood this afternoon,

“Taking the 20 years, taking everything that I’ve been doing…. certainly, going backwards, I would do certain things differently, but then in life you have to make some mistakes in order to understand it is a mistake and to sort of set your guidelines..

“All in all, I guess the vest that I’m wearing, that I’m wearing inside me, is pretty white, and I’m pretty happy about this. I don’t have many regrets and overall, I certainly feel very excited and proud of what has happened.”

Earlier he had said, “The rulebook always leaves you certain grey zones and leaves you clear guidelines at some moments. You have always to adapt to those guidelines and to those changes and that’s obviously the limits that you search for and occasionally you may overstep (those limits) and you may take the penalty for it.”

There was a strong show of support and respect for Schumacher from his fellow drivers today. Sebastian Vettel called him his “childhood hero”. Realising he was getting too gushing, he changed tack and said, “I think he’s an OK driver!”

Schumacher’s former team mate Felipe Massa spoke about when he was a boy in Brazil and Schumacher seemed to him to be a phenomenon, taking on and beating the national hero Ayrton Senna in 1994.

“He was first in the championship and I remember Michael very strong and he became very famous in Brazil because he was a young guy who was already quicker than Ayrton,” said Massa.

I asked him to clarify this point; did he really mean to say that in his opinion Schumacher was quicker than Senna?

He took the opportunity to clarify; “I meant he was already breaking Senna’s balls,” laughed the Brazilian. “Senna had more pole positions but Michael was ahead in the championship. I don’t believe Michael was quicker than Senna, no. I think Senna was the most incredible qualifier ever, but I put both on the same level (in terms of speed).”

“We have, I think, 32 points more than last year from these same nine races, so we are definitely improving our results, always trying to do our best,” said Alonso. “But we have to accept that Red Bull was very, very dominant in the first half. There is nothing we can do about that now except work hard and keep enjoying every Sunday. Then, at the end we will see where we are.

“We face difficulties in terms of the championship this year because of the points lost earlier, but we will not give up,” he said. “We will try and win races and wait for some mistakes from Red Bull and when we reach the key point of the championship, we will see if we are still too far behind. We are having a good championship now and we will try to keep doing the same. .”

Alonso said that the conveyor belt of development parts is now starting to bear fruit, taking the pace of the car closer to Red Bull in a qualifying condition – at Silverstone it was just 1/10th of a second. But the car was also faster on race day.

It appears that the unique conditions of Silverstone, where off throttle diffuser blowing was cut to 10%, may have helped Ferrari more than its rivals, taking a few tenths of a second less performance away from them, but it’s hard to quantify because the development parts, such as the new rear wing also improved its performance in high and low speed corners. The Ferrari was the faster car on race day. We will see if that pattern is repeated this weekend.

Looking back to the early part of the season, before Pat Fry took over as technical director, Alonso said, “We had brought a lot of new parts, some of which worked and others that did not.

“Then in the last four or five races, every new part we brought has worked fine, which is definitely good news, not just for this year but for future development for next year. I am very, very confident in the car, the engine and all our designers are very motivated now, knowing that everything they did, working day and night is producing good results on Sunday.”

Former technical director Aldo Costa left Ferrari recently, having been replaced by Fry in May.

Fry says that the choice of tyres for this weekend, soft and medium, should suit Ferrari and believes that the team is on the right track for a run of results in the second half of the season,

“What that win does is show that we have understood our problems and that we are working in the right direction,” said Fry. “We will continue to develop the car as quickly as we can, and each step we make improves our understanding, which is important as it also impacts on work for next year’s car.

“We have a few more updates for the Nürburgring, and then one further update for Hungary the following week. We are keeping the pressure on to develop as much as we can before the summer break.”

Before the race, Fernando Alonso commemorated the anniversary with an exhibition lap of the Silverstone circuit in the 375 F1 driven by Gonzalez at the 1951 British Grand Prix. The car now belongs to Bernie Ecclestone. It was driven around Silverstone 10 years ago by Michael Schumacher when he was a Ferrari driver.

“It is a very special win,” said Alonso of his 27th career win. “I think Silverstone is a special event for every driver competing in Formula One. We know the history of motorsport here in the UK so it is special Grand Prix.

“Also today I had the privilege to drive the Jose Froilan Gonzalez’s car. It was the first Ferrari win in Formula One and this year it is 60 years ago that one Ferrari car won the first grand prix in Formula One. Today we won on the same circuit with the same passion, with the same group of people, working for this fantastic team. Every year competing in Formula One right from the beginning so this is the big thing about Ferrari. The passion, the victory and the love for competition so very happy to drive this car and achieve this success again.”

It was also the 60th anniversary of Shell’s first victory with Ferrari in F1; “And to be able to celebrate 160 wins during Shell’s technical partnership with Ferrari 60 years on is a remarkable achievement.’ said Richard Bracewell, Shell Global Sponsorships Manager.

He also said that his own performance is as strong as at any time in his career and compared his performances to his team mate Felipe Massa, “These seven races.. I think I drove the best seven races of my career, with the best qualifying laps, compared to my teammate, compared to last year,” he said.

After a slow start where he qualified fifth in the first four races, Alonso had a chance to win both the last two races in Monaco and Canada, where he qualified second, but he wasn’t able to make it happen.

Speaking on Thursday he said, “I think we need to have the best car. If we have the best car we can win the title because there is plenty of time and plenty of races to recover. If we are fifth or sixth, as we are normally in qualifying etc, it’s very difficult because you cannot get the pace that everybody is doing.

“I think the championship is long. We need to concentrate, race by race. We will try to be on the podium, we will try to win every race we do. Obviously this is sometimes very difficult or impossible but this is our aim.

“This is also some pressure that you have when you are at Ferrari or when you are Ferrari. You need to win every race that you do, you need to win every championship that you do and despite these seven races when I think I drove the best seven races of my career, with the best qualifying laps, compared to my teammate, compared to last year, comparing different years, the starts etc.

“Even with that, it seems that the season has been a very bad season so far, which, in some ways I agree with, because we are Ferrari, we are obliged to win every race but in some other ways, I think we need to understand and respect our rivals and to work harder than them and to close that gap in the near future.”

Alonso didn’t want to raise hopes that the changes in the off throttle diffuser rules from Silverstone and the engine mapping changes this weekend in Valencia will put the Red Bulls behind the Ferraris. He sees it that Red Bull have the performance to be able to push when they want to and take it easy at other times.

“I don’t think it (the rule change) will massively change qualifying. I think Sebastian was quickest in qualifying (in Montreal). It’s true that it wasn’t one second, it was two tenths, but he was the quickest in wet conditions at the start of the race.

“We were following him and he was nearly eight tenths or nine tenths quicker than us on Sunday with race mapping. We saw a superior car at that moment, a dominant car, the Red Bull, in qualifying and in the race as well. It seems that sometimes they push a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. Because of that, in races you seem a little bit closer.”

There were a number of problems on Sunday for the Scuderia, but the main one was the car’s inability to generate heat and grip in the new hard Pirelli tyre.

Alonso's stellar start (Photo: Ferrari)

But that lap was set on soft tyres over a single lap, the story on race day, especially on hard tyres, was very different.

The extent to which the Ferrari was at sea on the new harder compound hard tyre was clear from the problems of Felipe Massa.

But it wasn’t just the tyres that were the problem for Ferrari; it was the lack of downforce generally, which caught them out.

“What we have seen today was expected, ” said team principal Stefano Domenicali after the race. “Here unfortunately in the condition where the car needs to have the maximum downforce – and we know we don’t have it – we had a multiplied effect on the tyres, above all on the hard, because we were not able to let them work.”

After a stellar start, Alonso led the first two stints – 18 laps in total, before his second stop. Some 46 laps later he was lapped by Vettel, meaning that he had lost an average of 1.9 seconds a lap between those two moments, most of it in the two stints on hard tyres after he switched to them on lap 29. At that time the gap to Vettel was just under 20 seconds. In the next 35 laps it increased to 87 seconds – a loss of 2.4 seconds per lap average.

“Basically we were out of position in a way (in the opening laps) we were not quick in the weekend,” said Alonso. “We did a very good lap yesterday and we were fourth, and maybe it was a strange result, and today on lap one we were first.”

As for his start, which was one of the highlights of the race, it was against the run of form. Alonso has generally had a poor time of it off the line this season. In the first three races he lost places; four in Australia, two in Malaysia, one in China and then he gained one place off the start in Turkey.

“We were missing some good starts this year and it finally came today,” said Alonso “And here with the long straight to Turn One you have the opportunity to take the slipstream as well.”

Ferrari had a setback with the FIA deeming their rear wing ineligible, albeit complimenting them on their ingenuity.

The rule says that the rear wing must be no more than 950mm above the floor of the car. The Gurney flaps on top of the Ferrari wing took it 30mm over that limit. Ferrari’s idea was to engineer the wing in such a way that they could argue that the Gurney flaps were part of the rear wing support, which doesn’t fall under the height restrictions. But the FIA didn’t buy it and on Saturday they had to go back to the Turkey specification wing, with a resulting small loss of rear downforce.

The team has been criticised for not being creative enough in recent years, in comparison with Red Bull and McLaren. Here was an example of them pushing the envelope a little, but it didn’t work out.

The next race is Monaco, a track where Alonso could have had a say last year had he not crashed in practice. This year marks the tenth anniversary of Ferrari’s last win in the Principality, a surprising record given how strong Ferrari was in the mid 2000s.

You wouldn’t put it past Alonso and Ferrari to have a strong weekend there with the new supersoft Pirelli tyres on offer.

Alonso himself appeared in the press conference and said that the whole process of contract renewal had taken only two weeks from start to finish. His reason for committing the rest of his career to the Scuderia was very clear, “I think the intention is to keep enjoying racing, ” he said. “For sure, I think I’m in the best team possible to fight for World Championships. I think some other teams go up and down. They have good years and bad years. At Ferrari, in the worst season you finish third or second in the World Championship, so this is something that Ferrari can offer to a driver.”

There have been a range of views on this in the paddock this afternoon from drivers and others. There is speculation about what might be linked to the deal, Santander’s long term funding, for example and one wonders what engineers from other teams Alonso might have identified as targets for Ferrari to hire, as team and driver opt for stability and growth.

There was also speculation about whether the contract specified what series Alonso would be racing in with Ferrari, the threat of a breakaway lurking quietly in the background as the negotiations over F1′s commercial future continue.

It is clear that there is quite a statement being made here by Ferrari and there is a political dimension to it as well; it says to Bernie Ecclestone, CVC and the FIA that Ferrari is in control of one of the sport’s leading drivers, another leading F1 asset under its control.

Michael Schumacher was unaware of the news until he was asked about it this afternoon in a press briefing. As a man who had a 10 year love affair with Ferrari, did he feel like he would if another man made a long term commitment to his former girlfriend? He said, “Not really, I believe in continuity for success and I’m sure he feels very comfortable there”.

Lewis Hamilton’s reaction was fascinating; asked if he was sad that this meant he wouldn’t driver for Ferrari he said, “Why not?” He added that he would have no problem racing alongside Alonso again, although he doubted that the feeling was mutual. “I’ll beat him in a different car,” said Alonso’s 2007 McLaren team mate.

Nico Rosberg, whose name is forever being linked with possible deals at all the top teams, was asked whether he could imagine himself committing to a five year deal with a team if the circumstances were right. “I could..” he said, thoughtfully. “But it is a very long time.”

Jenson Button, who is now 31 years old, agreed that five years is a long time when you do not know what is around the corner, “How does he know what he’s going to want to do in five years? That is the thing I can’t believe. Why does he need to sign a five-year contract?” said Button.

“Five years is long. We don’t know what’s going to happen in five years’ time do we? I’m not very good at planning that far into the future.”

Ferrari is, however and the news has been received with rapture in Italy; the team that is always there or thereabouts has secured the driver who is always there or thereabouts.

Alonso: Ferrari's main man (Darren Heath)

Apart from an impressive rally last Autumn, where the car was developed into a competitive enough package to allow him to win races and challenge for the title, so far the overall balance sheet for Ferrari with Alonso has not matched expectations. The two times champion has had to be patient as the team overcomes calibration issues with the wind tunnel and a restructuring of the technical management.

Alonso’s commitment to Ferrari is therefore a bold statement of faith on both sides. Like Vettel’s new three year contract with Red Bull, these commitments are the cornerstone of both teams’ medium/long term plans.

The other driver of that calibre, who has yet to decide his long term plans, is Lewis Hamilton.

McLaren are delighted with the pairing of Hamilton and Button, as are their sponsors and all the signs are that they intend to stick with it. However there are some destabilising forces, such as Red Bull’s management, which enjoys dropping compliments and hints about Hamilton joining their squad.

The question is; are they serious, or just trying to destabilise McLaren? And is Hamilton listening? The Englishman dismissed Red Bull as merely ‘a drinks manufacturer’ recently, but their continued domination on the track argues differently and Hamilton is in a position, in which many leading drivers have found themselves in the past; needing to decide whether to stick with McLaren because they are always there or thereabouts, or to try to get himself in the best car.

Hamilton’s idol, Ayrton Senna, won three world titles with McLaren, but eventually moved to Williams in 1994 because they had dominated the sport for the two previous seasons with their Adrian Newey designed car. Hamilton is eager to match Senna’s three titles, but his opposition is fierce and he needs to know that he will have access to a winning car.

Red Bull don’t need Hamilton in order to win because they have Vettel (and Newey). But this is a company which has always done things differently and Hamilton’s appeal to them would be enormous and it would re-energise the team, if they could persuade him to move at the end of 2012. Should this start to look like a reality, a new one year deal for Mark Webber would bridge the gap before Hamilton’s arrival.