Column: Jerez day 3: Magnificent Massa prances around Jerez

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Published on 07 Feb 2013 20:48
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By: Kenney Lybeer

It looked like Ferrari could be in a bit of trouble in terms of performance with Massa finishing 6th on Tuesday and 8th fastest yesterday. 24 hours after the team had said that they had been doing laps that did not involve going flat out, Massa finishes fastest.

Just before the clock's turned 12:00 at the Circuito de Jerez, Massa was sent out on track by the Scuderia on the soft Pirelli tyres. He came back to the garage after setting a time of 1:17.879 and set another time of 1:17.886 to show this wasn't a fluke.

With Fernando Alonso training in the Dubai desert, Massa hinted that the F138 could be strong when the lights go out in Australia. This was a problem for Ferrari last season, being a good second of the pace at the start of the season. The Brazilian's time is the fastest set so far out of the three days spent at Jerez, and he was 0.887 seconds faster than Rosberg today, who was second fastest in the Mercedes W04. Pedro de la Rosa will be driving the F138 tomorrow.

To make up from the 28 laps that Mercedes had notched up in the last two days, Rosberg drove 148 laps today, at least 38 more than anyone else. The German showed good pace near the end of the session, finishing ahead of Sebastian Vettel in the RB9.

Vettel was part of the Jerez testing for the first time today, and he will be in the cockpit tomorrow too. His time of 1:19.052 was faster than the best Mark Webber could achieve yesterday but still over a second slower than Massa's time.

At the end of the day, Vettel said, In terms of the times, its always nice to be on top, but if theres one phase of the year where it matters least, its here. Now is the time to do our homework. Its good for us to do a lot of laps, to see that the car is working well and well go from there.

After Grosjean finished fastest yesterday, Räikkönen was in the Lotus E21. The Finn was only able to drive 40 laps due to a clutch problem. Just like always, the Iceman was pretty cool about this issue - It was good to get behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car again. The E21 feels quite good so far, even if the balance isn't quite to my liking yet. We know the car can go faster, we were just running through what we needed to achieve.

The 2007 World Champion also said, Its a shame that we had a clutch issue at the end of the day, but thats why we come testing so we can find these problems and fix them.

Toro Rosso's impressive form continued, with Jean-Éric Vergne finishing 5th fastest and James Rossiter was given more testing time today, achieving 6th fastest.

Button was 7th fastest, followed by Estéban Gutierrez in 8th - fastest of the rookie drivers.

Chilton was 9th and Bottas finished 10th in the 2012 spec Williams. The Williams FW35 will launched on the 19th of February at the next test in Barcelona.

11th was Charles Pic in the Caterham CT03 and last was Paul di Resta, who only ran 7 laps at the end of the session.

The last day of testing at Jerez will be tomorrow.

F1 News Fernando Alonso Sebastian Vettel Williams Lotus F1 Ferrari Pirelli Mercedes