Rosberg fastest, new cars break cover

The start of the second pre-season test marked a number of firsts with Force India, Red Bull and Virgin completing their first laps in anger. However, as predicted, the weather hampered the first day of testing today at Jerez with Nico Rosberg’s fastest time of 1:20.927s in his Mercedes GP W01 - recorded ahead of the rains - remained unbeaten.

Sebastien Buemi was second fastest in his Toro Rosso Ferrari, a tenth shy of Rosberg, the latter bringing out the red flags right at the end of the session as his Mercedes stopped on track.

Nico Hulkenberg next up for Williams albeit 1.3s adrift. The new FW32 reportedly features some slight modifications from last week’s Valencia test with the team experimenting with brake ducting in the wind tunnel. Today Hulkenberg completed an impressive 118 laps.

Fernando Alonso was back behind the wheel of the new Ferrari F10, recording the fourth fastest time of the day – again recorded in the early morning dry conditions – ahead of new Sauber Ferrari recruit Kamui Kobayashi in the impressive C29.

Jenson Button missed much of the early dry running and was therefore sixth fastest for McLaren, four seconds shy of Rosberg and a fraction ahead of Tonio Liuzzi who got the honour of driving the new Mercedes-powered VJM03 for the first time.

Amid rumours regarding his long-term position at Renault, Vitaly Petrov was back in action with the eighth fastest time, the team opting to restrict the running given the conditions.

Mark Webber ran the new Red Bull RB6 extensively in the morning session before an oil leak saw the team stop the car on track. The Australian returned to the circuit, but only completed a handful of laps over the remainder of the day.

Following a brief shakedown at Silverstone, Timo Glock gave the new Virgin Cosworth its first public laps. The team sat out the morning running before completing a number of installation laps and then five timed laps. Virgin is the first new team to test its 2010 challenger.

Photographs from today’ testing are available here. Testing continues on Thursday.