Valencia report - Alonso once more

For the first time during this week's Valencia tests, the sky was sunny all day long and allowed lots of running for all the teams present. Once more it was Fernando Alonso who was fastest, closely followed by Jenson Button in the Honda.

Fernando Alonso and Heikki Kovalainen had a busy programme, and were hampered by frequent red flags caused by other cars which disrupted running. Once the circuit had warmed up, Fernando Alonso’s programme ran smoothly, without major incident. The Spaniard once again focused on tyre development, particularly during medium-length runs this afternoon.

The technical team responsible for Heikki Kovalainen’s car had a busy afternoon. After a productive morning, a minor hydraulic leak – exactly the kind of problem we go testing to solve – left the car out of action during early afternoon, as it was fixed. Better now than in Bahrain! Indeed, the test team often say that a difficult day’s testing is the best way to learn about a new package.

“We had another busy day,” summarised Heikki this evening. “I am pleased with my second day. We had to fix some problems, but nothing serious, and normal when you are developing a new car.” In spite of these incidents, the team nevertheless completed 743 km in total today, with Fernando taking top spot and Heikki seventh. The R26 has so far completed nearly 4000 km in five days of testing.

Both drivers began the test programme running through tyre evaluations followed by a race simulation with live pit stops in the afternoon session. Jenson suffered an engine failure in chassis 02 early in the afternoon session but was able to return to the track to complete his programme. Anthony completed an impressive 126 laps in total, with Jenson completing 85 laps.

Sam Michael, Technical Director, WilliamsF1: "Today Nico and Alex continued our testing programme driving the FW28 and FW27C, respectively. Both worked through some tyre tests for Bridgestone while we worked on improving reliability. Tomorrow, Nico will run for half the day before the test team head off to Jerez. João Paulo de Oliveira will also drive 20 laps in the FW27C."