Alonso continued with development work on the F150 yesterday, concentrating mainly on acquiring data which will be used to analyse the aerodynamic behaviour of the car, as well as gaining a further understanding of the Pirelli tyres. The Spanish driver covered a total of 108 laps during Wednesday, the best in a time of 1.13.307 which left him fastest, three tenths up on reigning champion Sebastien Vettel (Red Bull).

Alonso was smiling as he left the “Ricardo Tormo” circuit after the debrief that ended the second day of testing for Scuderia Ferrari. Indeed, a figure of 800 kilometres completed over the first two days of development for the F150 constitutes a good basis on which to build, in terms of the work over the coming weeks. It shows that things have got off on the right foot, at least in terms of reliability. As for performance, it is obviously much too early to draw any conclusions: Alonso’s 1.13.307 might have been the fastest time of the day, but that does not reveal very much given that it is impossible to know what fuel loads and tyres the other drivers were using out on track, as Alonso himself pointed out. “We had three types of tyre available here and there is a significant performance difference between them, in the region of between six and seven tenths on the clock. This means it is too hard to make comparisons between the performance of the various cars.”

“I am happy with the work we did,” said the Spaniard. “[Tuesday] we concentrated mainly on the systems on the car, on checking that everything was okay, while on this second day we were able to go deeper into our understanding of its behaviour, even with different fuel loads, making the first changes to the set-up. For example, we tried to deal with the oversteer and to find ways of dealing with tyre degradation over a long distance.”

A few minor hitches linked to carrying out some set-up changes on the car slowed the work programme yeterday morning, but it did not upset the planned programme which was fully completed. “This is totally normal when you start developing a brand new car,” explained Alonso. “From the reliability point of view, this is definitely a good start. The F150 proved to be very strong and we can be happy about that. As to whether we will be competitive, we won’t really know for sure until Bahrain.”

Felipe Massa was a keen observer at the test yesterday, and this morning, it was the Brazilian's turn to get behind the wheel of the F150 while his team-mate has now headed off for Maranello where, tomorrow, the Spaniard will be working in the simulator. Massa’s first test day with the F150 however hasn't got off to the kind of start he would have wanted. As he was coming to the end of his first run of laps this morning the Brazilian had to park at the side of the track with an oil leak caused by a broken clamp. Unfortunately the lubricant ended up on the exhausts which led to a small fire breaking out and that caused some damage to the car. The mechanics immediately set to work on repairing the damage, but it is unlikely that the car will be back on track much before three in the afternoon.