After Sebastien Buemi drove for the opening two days of the first winter test session in Valencia, yesterday's final day on track saw Jaime Alguersuari get his turn in the Faenza, Italy-based Toro Rosso's new Ferrari-powered STR5 in front of a huge crowd of over 30,000 that had turned out to see his countryman Fernando Alonso's debut behind the wheel of a Ferrari F1 car.

Once Alguersuari's installation in the car had been checked, he soon got down to quick and consistent lap times over long runs. The technical programme yesterday included a repeat of the previous day’s systems checks, an aero evaluation, scans of running on different fuel loads and an assessment of the Bridgestone Soft and Supersoft compounds.

While it is hard to draw many conclusions from the lap times in Valencia, the young Spaniard posted the fourth quickest time of the day, out of the seven runners on track, and his best lap, set in 1:12.576, left him just over a tenth of a second adrift of former F1 World Champion Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes GP. Alguersuari was also quicker that new F1 World Champion Jenson Button (McLaren-Mercedes) who posted a 1:12.951 after covering 82 laps, as well as Vitaly Petrov (Renault) who managed a 1:13.097 out of his 75 laps on the circuit and finally Nico Hulkenberg (Williams-Cosworth) who turned in his quickest lap in 1:13.669 out of 126 laps completed to wrap up the day's action. Alguersuari's best lap time was also more than a second faster than his own team mate Sebastian Buemi managed in the new STR5 over the first two days of the test when he ran a combined total of 125 laps, the Swiss driver posting a quickest time on Monday in 1:14.762 and following that up on Tuesday with a 1:13.823 lap.

“It felt good to complete my first ever Formula 1 test session, as last season I was never able to do any testing. I was able to concentrate on understanding the car, without having to think about it in terms of a race weekend,” said Jaime Alguersuari. “Personally, I felt much stronger in the car, as I have been training hard in the three months since I last drove in Abu Dhabi. Today was a positive experience and I’m looking forward now to next week in Jerez. It’s too early to say much about the car’s performance, but it felt competitive.”