WhiteBlue wrote: The fact that Alonso did not bother to show up is rather highlighting this situation.
Is this confirmed? Edit: I mean in the fact that it was Alonso who didn't bother, not the team deciding against using him.
My personal thought would be that Ferrari are maximising their young driver time to test new parts on the car in order to catch up. Considering the limits placed on race drivers, it didn't really make much sense to run Alonso for them as it would only provide tyre data, which could be gained in FP.