Inside testing: Jerez daily blog

Friday: Final test day By Edd Straw

Fernando Alonso said all of the right things. But, of course, he always does.

Yesterday, this blog concluded by suggesting that if Ferrari ended the final day of the Jerez test with an attention-grabbing number at the top of the timesheets, it would tell us a lot about the situation that the prancing horse finds itself in. So it was to nobody's great surprise that Alonso ended up fastest and emerged from the four-day test with the second quickest 2012-specification car time overall.

Few doubted that it was a glory run designed to ease both the glare of the media spotlight in Italy and Luca di Montezemolo's blood pressure.

As the Spaniard faced the press 15 minutes after the chequered flag fell, it was inevitable that there were plenty of questions about the struggles Ferrari has had getting on top of the new car and whether it will be able to use what it has learned to get a firm grip on it.

The F2012 had already betrayed Alonso by being struck down with a hydraulics problem in the morning not long after he had set his fastest time. In total, he completed only 36 laps on a day where the team needed 100 or more.

"It is very early at days at the moment," he said. "[There is] still a lot of work to do. We need to keep understanding the car; maybe we understand 20 per cent of what we need. In the next days, we will try to get the rest."

While nobody would claim that Alonso is damning the car, that 20 per cent figure leaves you in no doubt that there is going to be a huge amount of work going on in Maranello between now and the next test at Barcelona. The pressure was already on pre-season but now things are doubly intense with that 80 per cent still to be found. Once that understanding is there, Ferrari should be able to close any deficit rapidly.

Of course, none of this means that the new car should be condemned or that Ferrari is going to be running around in the midfield this year. With expectations sky-high, anything other than a serious run at the championship would be regarded as a failure.

Right now, there's no way to be sure if Ferrari is trying to understand a very different car and has the data to hit the ground running in Barcelona, if there is one major weakness that it is battling to fix or if there is a multitude of problems to be solved. Frankly, the precise cause of the troubles might not even be clear to Ferrari just yet, even if the symptoms of its ailments are very obvious.

"Day one in Barcelona will be a much better starting point," said Alonso...

Trouble is, some of the others have already planted firm foundations at their starting point. Throughout the test, things ran smoother at Red Bull and despite losing track time with electrical gremlins today, the RB8 continues to look like the most poised car on track. That will come as no surprise to anyone, but the fact that the Lotus E20 made a positive impression has led to plenty of paddock chatter to the effect that the ex-Renault team is back in the game after a dismal second half of last year.

Romain Grosjean couldn't stop grinning after today's running. Couldn't yesterday either. That, in itself, wasn't much to write home about as he seems to have been smiling almost continuously since getting back into an F1 car last year. But while Ferrari was fielding questions about its troubles, Lotus was having to bat away suggestions that it had got off to a flying start.

"It looks good so far, but it's too early to say anything," said Grosjean, proving once again that those who have got off to a decent start play things down and those that haven't have to accentuate the positives.

Romain Grosjean hasn't stopped smiling all week © LAT

Also very upbeat was Jarno Trulli, against all expectations back in the saddle at Caterham today. He had come very close to being displaced by a monied driver over the winter, and you can see that he is determined to extend his grand prix career. He even got on with the power steering, something that he blames for the poor 2011 season that came close to leaving him out of F1.

"We are very close," he said of his Achilles heal through last year. "It's 90 per cent of the way there, so it is fine. It shouldn't be a problem, to be honest."

If Trulli's still precarious situation can help Caterham to get the best out of him, then the team will have a fantastic driver on their hands. Appropriate really, given that pre-season testing is all about potential.

It won't be until Melbourne that we find out the competitive order, but already the stories of the season are taking shape. It seems that Red Bull will be as formidable as ever, but the identity of the team, or teams, that will take the fight to it remains uncertain.

By Alonso's own admission, the story of day one at Barcelona might prove to be Ferrari. If, at the end of that four-day test, Ferrari is still struggling to master its machinery, even he might struggle to talk the team up. If it's on the money, it's game on for the red corner.

• Jerez testing: Image gallery.

Thursday: Test day 3: By Simon Strang

For Ferrari's technical chief Pat Fry to admit during his afternoon press briefing on Thursday evening that 'he is not happy' with where his team is after just three days of testing in 2012, was not an enormous surprise. But then again it also was!

From day one it became apparent that the radical, and it has to be said, ugly, F2012 was not working for its driver in the way the Red Bull RB8, McLaren MP4-27 and Lotus E20 were. But on the other hand it is also only the opening test, where the programme the teams follow is one of securing reliability and set-up understanding while finding a platform to build on.

The new Ferrari F2012 is yet to impress in Jerez © sutton-images.com

It's not about performance and it's not about limits - they will come at Barcelona - and even then they will to a large extent be masked from public view. That's why you frequently hear the phrase: 'times mean nothing'.

It's also why Formula 1 comes to Jerez first, where the surface is unusually abrasive on the tyres, the corners are mid-to-low speed, and the characteristics of the venue are unlike anywhere else the sport will visit this year.

So if a car isn't going to work anywhere, and at any time, it's going to be here and now. As Bruno Senna said after his first run in the Williams FW34: 'This is Jerez; we could go to Barcelona in two weeks and the car will feel completely different."

But after three days, two with Felipe Massa in the car and double world champion Fernando Alonso in it today, the team still appeared to be struggling to lock down a baseline set-up it could be happy with.

The boxey-looking F2012, which features pullrod front suspension this year as Ferrari attempts to recover front aero and find a way to make Pirelli's tyres heat up more effectively than last year - didn't look dreadful on the track. But neither did it look like a car that was working particularly well either.

And while the times were pretty irrelevant, at no point did the Ferrari look capable of achieving the mid-1m18s lap Romain Grosjean pulled out of the bag for Lotus - which by the way, caught Lewis Hamilton's attention enough for him to remark on the car's impressive behaviour in his own briefing.

And yet still you found yourself saying: 'This doesn't mean anything. It's just day three. We don't know anything yet.' Doubts were creeping in though, and they permeated through the press centre and in corners of the paddock too. You never know who's quick at the first test, but you know who's not happy. Last year it was McLaren.

So when Fry said in his briefing that the team had a lot of work to do (the same words uttered by Felipe Massa yesterday) and that they are still learning how to make all the new parts of this brave new concept work together, it felt like a surprising admission so early in the game. Particularly when set against the backdrop of Red Bull and, in particular McLaren, being so positive about what they believe they have to work with, in the run up to Melbourne.

Fernando Alonso is waiting for a world championship-winning car from Ferrari © sutton-images.com

The stakes are high for Ferrari. It's set itself ambitious targets this year and has declared its intention to return to championship contention. With a driver of the calibre of Fernando Alonso scuffing the sawdust impatiently in the stables, nothing else will do, or all that investment in buying him in his prime will have been wasted. And then of course there is pride.

But the other implication by admitting you are not where you want to be at this stage of the game is that you risk demotivating the troops not only on the ground, but back at base, who have worked flat out over the winter in the hope that they have built a winner. Every one in every team will have been hanging on each tiny piece of information this week, any glimmer of truth to the ideal that they have a car they can race, rather than one they must chase with.

If you then hear the team's drivers and chiefs quoted as saying there is more work to do, and the team is behind the ball, it must a galling prospect on the back of such a hard winter's toil.

It's not over yet, indeed, it's hardly started. And we've seen cars start slow and be the pace-setters by the first race. We've also seen teams turn entire seasons around. McLaren has become a master of it, Ferrari itself has achieved similar feats. But this admission by Fry is a marker in the first chapter of 2012, certainly.

The proof we're looking for may come on the final day, though, if Alonso signs off the test with a low-fuel glory run.

• Jerez testing: Image gallery.

Wednesday: Test day 2: By Sam Tremayne

If Mark Webber's 1m19.184s - fastest of the 2012 cars on day two - didn't make Red Bull's rivals sit up and take notice, his post-session analysis certainly should. It is rare to hear a driver so sanguine after just two days of testing; rarer still to hear them announce that they are already confident of being in the mix...

On the surface, it shouldn't be that surprising a declaration: with a dominant season to build upon, and the seemingly unparalleled genius of Adrian Newey at the helm, Red Bull should be expected to challenge. But consider it within the context of testing - Rubens Barrichello, for example, ended last year's Jerez test on top - and it is far more striking. You make a prediction for the season after just two days at your own peril.

Mark Webber was in upbeat form after the second day at Jerez © LAT

That is, in so many ways, the real appeal of testing. No matter what the formbook, no matter what the time, you can't - or perhaps shouldn't - count anyone out. Right now, everyone - and no-one - is a winner and a loser in equal measure.

The reverse is also true, which is why Webber's unusually early expression of confidence stands out. "The car was pretty competitive in winter testing last year and it's the same again this year," he said. "We feel that we are prepared to do well. Overall, there are no big surprises."

The team still has work to do of course, and the RB8 will evolve ceaselessly before the season is officially underway, but there are ominous signs. For a start, it looks planted to the circuit in much the same way as last year's car did. A spell watching in the final complex highlighted how early Webber was able to get on the power, and how settled the car was both in the fast right of Ferrari Curva and the almost achingly slow left hairpin of Ducados.

More than anything though it was the subtext of Webber's words, the matter-of-fact nature of his analysis, which suggest Red Bull might just extend its winning streak yet.

Of course, Webber was not the only driver in buoyant mood after the second day in Southern Spain. If not irrepressible, Caterham's Heikki Kovalainen was certainly ebullient after a day on which the CT01 completed 139 laps - and that with KERS in use for the very first time.

Raikkonen was another who declared himself happy with his two-day stint, having topped the timesheets on day one and completed 117 laps on the second, while Michael Schumacher extolled the virtues of a test programme in which Mercedes used their 2011-spec car to measure the differences in this year's Pirelli rubber.

Kovalainen was buoyed by the introduction of KERS, and the completion of 139 laps, on Wednesday © LAT

In those cases, however, the enthusiasm comes with qualifiers - or, as Kovalainen put it, "My initial feeling is that we have made a step forward, but we need more laps and more time to get more information."

Webber's confidence was also a dramatic contrast to a far more circumspect Felipe Massa, who admitted Ferrari faces a lot of work before it can be confident its new F2012 will deliver a jump in performance.

"Actually there is a lot of work," said the Brazilian. "It is a brand new car and it is not a car that we had in the last year - even at the start. It is a car that needs a lot more work, and a lot more things to try as well."

It is an oft-repeated truism that too much can be read into testing, and particularly into the timesheets. But body language and subtext can sometimes be telling and the different attitudes of Webber and Massa are a useful window into where their respective teams currently sit.

As Kovalainen puts it, "We're very positive, but it's also a question of what others have done - that will probably determine the game most."

The bottom line is, will the rest be able to do enough to make Red Bull seriously question its status as F1's top dog between now and Melbourne?

• Jerez testing: Image gallery.

Tuesday: Test day 1 by Simon Strang

The intensity of the television scrum outside Lotus hospitality at the end of day one was a clear statement about the enormity of the moment. Kimi Raikkonen's return from his self-imposed hiatus had attracted attention for weeks, but going fastest on his first day back in the viper's nest was perfect headline fodder.

And the immediate media response was as if the man had just got pole position for the Melbourne opener.

Kimi Raikkonen leaves contrails in his wake during testing at Jerez © LAT

Sitting inside that same black and gold unit some 20 minutes later, Raikkonen himself said that of course it meant nothing to be fastest, and that perhaps it only 'would have done had it been in qualifying for the first race'.

And in the context of testing he's most certainly right. Never more so in fact than amid the opening salvo of the first test, when the vast majority of teams are finding their way in their new cars, doing little more from a competitive point of view than ensuring they switch on correctly.

As Mark Webber said when evaluating his own first day in Red Bull's new championship defender, the RB8: "We always come to Jerez and drive the cars in their baby format. Jerez never gets to see them at their best. Brazil does."

But still, all that having been said, it wasn't the time itself but the manner in which Raikkonen set about achieving it that caught your attention.

Right from the very beginning of the day, as the mist lifted away from the back straight, the Finn looked purposeful as he forged through Turns 3, 4 and 5, trailing giant metre-long contrails in his wake.

As his times steadily came down, and the laps mounted, so you became more confident as you watched on that he would continue to go faster and faster.

Raikkonen was focused on getting on with things © LAT

The body language of the car, even down to the no-nonsense outlaps Raikkonen fired in at the beginning of each stint, suggested he wanted to get on with it. That is, get on with the business of re-learning and re-bonding with a sport he once again appears outwardly to love - even if he insists that the desire never left him in the way the press frequently portrayed.

The truth is that while being fastest may have meant nothing when matched against the varied programmes of the teams present at Jerez (Red Bull started late and Lotus and Sauber got to shakedown their cars yesterday), by the end of the day, no one was surprised by the name at the top of the times. In fact, many were enthused.

Because although Raikkonen's time itself was worthless from a scientific perspective, it sends a bright message of hope to those who have been excited by the story of his return to F1. An indication that this may not go down the way Michael Schumacher's much-vaunted renaissance did when he came back with Mercedes this time two years ago.

Maybe, just maybe, Kimi can rediscover that lightning brilliance we saw him strike so frequently for McLaren, or the championship-winning consistency that brought him a title in his Ferrari days.

To have six world champions competing in the same F1 campaign is a great boost for the sport, but for many fans and paddock observers, that story would be eclipsed by the return of the 'real' Kimi.

Not the one that switched on and off randomly in 2009 like glitchy KERS, but the one who could rock a racetrack to its very core with blinding otherworldly driving talent. The same one standing outside the Lotus motorhome on Tuesday night.

• Red Bull RB8: Image gallery.

• Williams FW34: Image gallery.

• Jerez testing: Image gallery.

Monday: Launch day by Edd Straw

Today was what you might call the culmination of the soft launch of Formula 1 2012. After last week's unveilings from Ferrari, McLaren and Force India, we had the chance not only to see the new Lotus in the flesh and the new Sauber, but also for both cars to complete a few laps of promotional running ahead of the start of testing proper tomorrow.

A big talking point has been this unsightly new generation of cars.

Kimi Raikkonen was fresh and enthusiastic ahead of his Renault E20 run © LAT

Thanks to new rules lowering the height of the nose by 75mm, the majority of the new challengers boast an unsightly slope where the front of the chassis meets the nose, dubbed by some the 'platypus look'. When confronted by the car in person, either static or on track, this feature doesn't look as unsightly as it does from afar in photographs.

While that might be cold comfort for those watching on TV, it does suggest that, with time, we will get used to the 'platypus'.

That's not to say, unfortunately, that we can expect the class of 2012 to go down in history as one of the most attractive we've seen. But at least it shouldn't take too long to become acclimatised to the strange new face of F1. Certainly, they are here to stay and cosmetic concerns aren't high on the agenda, as Scuderia Toro Rosso's charismatic technical director Giorgio Ascanelli pointed out.

"They are not nice, I must say," he admitted. "James Allison from Lotus wanted a rule to avoid them looking so ugly. But Charlie Whiting said it would be the first time we made a rule to avoid cars being ugly."

This wasn't the only strange force at work at Jerez. During Lotus's real-world launch, which came a day after it released images online, Kimi Raikkonen was positively garrulous when it came to talking with the assembled media. There have been plenty of question marks over his commitment, but his willingness to answer at length was a far cry from the near-monosyllabic Finn who we became used to during his final year at Ferrari in 2009.

The Sauber C31 also got shaken down a day ahead of the test's official start © LAT

At a time when every single utterance, glimpse of a car or rumour is used to draw conclusions about the competitive order, let's take that as a positive sign about his commitment to excelling on his F1 comeback.

We got to see Raikkonen on track again in a contemporary F1 car for the first time since 2009 too, although he suggested that he spent a little bit too much time going slowly during his afternoon of promotional on-track running.

"It feels great in first and second gear," he said after his run, which was perhaps at odds with the sight of him getting the car sideways on occasion as tried to get a feel of what it could do. Either that, or his rallying exploits have given him a great penchant for oversteer. Whatever, it's great news for the fans to see him doing that!

For the teams, however, this is a time to be anxious, overworked and excited in equal measure. Building up the cars will not have been an easy task for any of them, especially with the need to pass the FIA-mandated crash tests before they start running, rather than prior to the opening race as in previous years. The early going will be all about systems checks, ensuring there are no fundamental reliability problems, checking cooling rates and getting baseline aerodynamic figures. Inevitably, for some teams that will become a very fiddly and time-consuming task that could make the next few days very frustrating.

Toro Rosso was one of three teams to unveil its car on Monday at Jerez © LAT

Few, however, will be jumping for joy whatever happens. It's not until the first qualifying session that anyone will see the cars going toe-to-toe on equal footing and even those who are pretty confident about their progress will be more nervous than thrilled. New-car running is a time not for celebration, but to get an idea of the long road yet to be travelled with machines that will have a big effect on the teams' next 12 months, not to mention their win bonuses.

Tomorrow morning (Tuesday), oxymoronically, the phony war begins in earnest. The opening test is the first chance to get the vaguest of sketches of the competitive order in 2012, but don't forget that over the next few days what we will get are mere impressions of what is to come.

All that aside, F1 2012 is underway. And, for all its cosmetic problems, looking very good indeed. It's a time of hope and fear for everyone, for when it comes to new cars everyone is a winner and a loser in equal measure.

• Lotus E20: Image gallery.

• Toro Rosso STR 7: Image gallery.

• Sauber C31: Image gallery.

• Jerez testing: Image gallery.