Gene fastest as testing resumes at Jerez

Only Ferrari, Williams and McLaren chose to participate on the opening day of the post-Suzuka test, with the Ferrari test pair dominating the times as they worked primarily on tyre options for Brazil.

Gene lapped in 1:17.805, just under a second ahead of Luca Badoer.

It was Williams's Alex Wurz who completed the most laps, driving in the Williams-Toyota, with 108 tours around the Spanish track. The Austrian managed a full race simulation including pit stops, and encountered no problems.

That was in sharp contrast to his teammate Narain Karthikeyan, who twice caused red flags by stopping on the circuit with electrical problems. The Indian only managed 10 laps all day.

That was the same amount as Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren, although in this case the low mileage was planned.

McLaren have two days of their testing allocation remaining and want to use these on Wednesday and Thursday, so Hamilton's activity was limited to a shakedown today.

BMW-Sauber and Toyota will take to the track tomorrow, with Michael Schumacher joining Ferrari's programme for his final test as an active race driver.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver       Team                  Time      Laps
 1.  Gene         Ferrari          (B)  1:17.805   102
 2.  Badoer       Ferrari          (B)  1:18.789    70
 3.  Wurz         Williams-Toyota  (B)  1:19.549   108
 4.  Hamilton     McLaren-Mercedes (M)  1:22.916    10
 5.  Karthikeyan  Williams-Toyota  (B)  1:23.550    10