Jerez, Day 4: Alonso puts Ferrari on top

In a surprise turn of events, it was Fernando Alonso in the Ferrari F2012 who topped the time sheets of the morning session on the last day of testing in Jerez.

With only 9 teams taking part, this was the first day that only 2012 challenger cars have been on the track. HRT F1 departed after only 2 days testing in their 2011 challenger to work on their 2012 car, a car which has since failed the FIA crash test twice, and Mercedes AMG F1 Team left the track yesterday having dominated Day’s 2 and 3 with their 2011 W02.

The morning was the coldest temperature morning yet, barely reaching just over freezing towards mid-morning. The cold weather meant the teams struggled to bring their cars and tyre temperatures up to speed and restricted somewhat the number of laps the teams could / were comfortable doing.

Fernando Alonso, looking a lot more comfortable in his Ferrari F2012 then he did yesterday, posted an early flying lap of 1:18.877 over only 22 laps – the least of anyone running in the mornings session. After Ferrari Technical Director Pat Fry admitted yesterday “I am not happy with where we are at the moment”, the team will surely be happy with their day’s performance so far.

And although Alonso’s quick time in the F2012 could be put down to a small fuel load, the team were able to show some competitive pace whilst main rivals, Red Bull Racing, encountered a time consuming electrics problem.

Sebastian Vettel managed just 2 installation laps (and neither of them timed) in the RB8 this morning before limping back to the pit garage. The team would later announce that the car had electrical issues which the team would be working on. Although reporting the fault was not serious, Vettel would not have another run the entire morning, and did not record any timed laps as of 13:00 CET.

Ironically, it was Red Bull Racing’s sister team Toro Rosso who not only had another clean morning, but rookie driver Jean-Eric Vergne ended the morning in P2, just 0.720 seconds off the pace set by Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton had another fairly subdued morning in his McLaren MP4-27, completing only 36 laps and posting a time marginally slower than the time he set yesterday; P3 by the end of the morning and general data test analysis for the team.

Romain Grosjean had another solid morning in the Lotus E20, and felt comfortable running for only 24 laps, the fewest of the 8 teams running, and Kamui Kobayashi was right behind in sixth position.

Having had to skip the entire afternoon session yesterday due to Jules Bianchi’s early morning crash and a lack of spare parts, the Sahara Force India team managed to get the VJM05 completed overnight and Nico Hulkenberg finally got a few laps in to get the car up to seventh place on the time sheets.

Bruno Senna, with his second day of testing in the Williams F1 FW34 managed an impressive 97 laps this morning before stopping the car at the (ironically!) ‘Senna’ corner having drained every last drop of fuel from the car. This would bring a red flag to the session for a few minutes, but with no drastic implications for the field. Williams F1 Team were using the morning session to run reliability test, and ultimately, race simulation.

Jarno Trulli, the third driver to test the Caterham CT01 in Jerez, completed an average 53 laps in the car, and brought up the back of the field of 8 cars (as Vettel was not able to complete a timed lap).

Day 4 AM times and lap numbers can be seen below:

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