For Scuderia Ferrari the penultimate test session before the start of the 2009 F1 season in Australia in twenty five days time began early this morning at Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain.

For Scuderia Ferrari the penultimate test session before the start of the 2009 F1 season in Australia in twenty five days time began early this morning at Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain. The Ferrari F60 debuted at the Jerez circuit at 9:01am when Felipe Massa drove the installation lap. Today the work was concentrated mainly on two main areas: set up and reliability.

Unfortunately not everything went smoothly, especially during the second part of the day. First the car went off the track, although no harm was done to the single-seater. And the mechanics just had to check if everything was alright. Later on in the day there were several red flags in the afternoon, which interrupted the work, which should have been be undertaken with continuity. Meanwhile the weather was very unstable: in the morning the sky started to cloud over, after lunch there was some light rain and in the end the sun was back.

There were eight teams on the track at Jerez today. Apart from Ferrari, there were McLaren (De La Rosa), Renault (Nelson Piquet), Red Bull (Sebastian Vettel), Toyota (Kamui Kobayashi), Williams (Nico Rosberg), BMW (Robert Kubica) and Force India (Giancarlo Fisichella) which was debuting with its new car fitted with a Mercedes engine.

The fastest driver on the track today was also the youngest: the German Sebastian Vettel took - in a lap that seemed to be a qualifying simulation - 1.19.055. Massa was the second fastest with 1.20.33, followed by Kobayashi (1.20.699), Rosberg (1.21.171), Kubica (1.21.292), Fisichella (1.21.584), De La Rosa (1.21.831) and Piquet (1.22.011). The Spaniard from McLaren drove the most laps (94), followed by Vettel (87), Kobayashi (79), Rosberg (71), Felipe (63), Piquet (52), Kubica (47) and Fisichella (31).

"Even if today we were confronted with almost all of our competitors, it's still to early to have an idea about the performance on the track," Massa said before he went to the motorhome for a briefing with the engineers. "Nevertheless I'm satisfied with the day: the car seems to be very competitive, even on a track like this with a different layout than the one at Sakhir. It's a shame that the session has been interrupted several times in the afternoon. Let's hope that we can drive more over the next days." Massa will be again behind the wheel of the F60 tomorrow and on Tuesday, while Kimi Raikkonen will test the car on the last two days of the session.

Test details (01/03/2009) - Circuit: Jerez circuit - 4.423 km; Driver: Felipe Massa; Car: Ferrari F60; Weather: air temperature 15/18 °C, track temperature 15/19 °C. From cloudy to overcast, with a few drops of rain in the afternoon and bursts of sunshine at the end of the day.