Trackside view from Jerez

Raikkonen's Lotus looked well-poised on-track © sutton-images.com

Kimi Raikkonen was trying. That much was clear, and not just from the timesheets. In testing, what matters far more than the laptimes is the attitude of the car on track, those glimpses of the potential of what is to come. On that evidence, regardless of how good the Lotus E20 goes on to become, Raikkonen has set out his stall to attack.

On the first day of pre-season testing, the Formula 1 cars are no more than prototype grand prix machines. They are infants on their first day at nursery rather than fully mature graduates, and they must be treated as such. Drawing conclusions from what we saw on Tuesday at Jerez would be tantamount to judging a grown man as the boy he once was. This is not just any prologue, it is the first paragraph of the prologue to the 2012 F1 season.

Even the teams themselves, with their gigabytes of data, will have no clear picture of where they stand beyond the vaguest of impressions of what these cars might become as they advance into adolescence during the test days that follow over the next month.