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Ferrari duo set the pace at Valencia

Ferrari duo Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen led the way on the first major head-to-head test with new cars on Tuesday, although it was the pace of the Williams that caused a few surprises

Massa and Raikkonen continued development work of their F2008 at Valencia in Spain, and Massa's best effort put him more than half a second clear at the end of the day.

But it was the early pace of the new Williams FW30, which only ran for the first time yesterday, that impressed onlookers - as Nico Rosberg set the third quickest time during a long run.

That effort put him almost two tenths ahead of McLaren duo Heikki Kovalainen and Pedro de la Rosa.

Fernando Alonso continued to put mileage on the new Renault R28, although his sixth fastest time was done on a short run.

Behind the Spaniard, Kazuki Nakajima continued development work in the interim Williams FW29, with Sebastian Vettel setting the eighth fastest time in the updated Toro Rosso car that will start the 2008 season.

Marko Asmer was given another run in last year's BMW Sauber, setting the ninth best time, and his team will be wondering why he was able to outpace Nick Heidfeld in the new F1.08 - which had sprouted a second set of Viking horns on the nose.

Toyota's new TF108 also failed to shine, with Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock languishing near the bottom of the timesheets.

"It was a tricky day, as usual here in Valencia," said Trulli. "It is always quite hard to reach a conclusion on a track where conditions change rapidly from run to run but it was important to get more data and more idea about the new car. I tried some set-up changes and development work testing aerodynamics.

"I am pretty happy with what we have achieved but we know there is still room for improvement so we will continue to work hard. We did quite a lot of laps today which was the plan and it was good to see the new car continues to be reliable."

David Coulthard split the Toyotas in the new Red Bull Racing RB4, while Alex Wurz finished at the bottom of the times on his debut as a test driver for Honda Racing.

There were a total of four red flags during the day, two caused by Heidfeld, who stopped on track once and went off the other time. The other two red flags where caused by Massa running out of fuel and Alonso breaking down at the end of the day.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time      Laps
 1.  Massa         Ferrari              (B)  1:12.182   97 *
 2.  Raikkonen     Ferrari              (B)  1:12.721  100 *
 3.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:12.838   80 *
 4.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:13.026  100 *
 5.  de la Rosa    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:13.163  107 *
 6.  Alonso        Renault              (B)  1:13.316  133 *
 7.  Nakajima      Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:13.473   89 
 8.  Vettel        Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:13.627   86 
 9.  Asmer         BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:13.669   44
10.  Bourdais      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:13.675   73
11.  Heidfeld      BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:13.779   80 *
12.  Trulli        Toyota               (B)  1:13.820   69 *
13.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:13.944   70 *
14.  Glock         Toyota               (B)  1:14.095   76 *
15.  Liuzzi        Force India-Ferrari  (B)  1:15.095   64
16.  Wurz          Honda                (B)  1:15.440   49
* 2008 car

All Timing Unofficial

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