Barcelona day 3: Alonso goes fastest in the Ferrari

Fernando Alonso was fastest today in front of the home fans at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain. The 31 year old set a lap time of 1:21.875 on the soft tyre - the fastest this week. The benchmark was set by the Spaniard in the morning session before the team did race simulation work in the afternoon. This was his third and day in the F138 this year, and he will be replaced by Felipe Massa tomorrow, who set the fastest time overall in Jerez.

"We tried various aerodynamic configurations and for the first time, we made some set-up changes to get a good understanding of tyre behavior and degradation," said Alonso.

"With every change we made, the car reacted as I expected. Once again this year, the tyres will be one of the crucial aspects to manage: they are softer and quicker, but also less consistent and they degrade rapidly with every lap."

"We will have a lot of work to do to understand how best to balance the car, but that applies to all the teams."

Almost 0.3 seconds slower than Alonso was Hülkenberg in the Sauber, second fastest. Like Alonso, he set his lap in the morning session on the soft compound tyre, and he was marginally ahead of Romain Grosjean in the E21.
Grosjean drove 66 laps of the track in race simulation - the length of the Spanish Grand Prix, with four pit stops. In total he drove 119 laps, the most of anyone.

After his day in the car, the Frenchman joked, “I think I’m ready for a sleep after so many laps in the car! It’s good to see reliability today to add to the pace we've already seen in the car. We’re still at an early stage of development so it’s really promising to see where we are."

“It was difficult out on track as temperatures were so low, but we've gained a lot of useful data. The 2013 tyres certainly feel different from last year’s but already we’re starting to understand them. I hope it’s dry tomorrow so we can get some more laps under our belt.”

Pastor Maldonado was 5th, behind Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes. The Venezuelan had the FW35 to himself in the morning, but Bottas was behind the wheel in the afternoon. The Finn finished 7th fastest.

Technical director Mark Coughlan said, “It’s been a very good day for us, we’ve completed two race simulations and both drivers were happy with their individual programmes.

“We’re really pleased with the reliability we have shown this week, having completed 147 laps with the FW35 today, 331 laps in total so far this week. We feel we have got a good car to now start developing and we look forward to continuing tomorrow.”

Jenson Button and McLaren weren't concentrating on hot laps today. Instead they did set-up work in the morning and concentrated on longer runs and pit stops in the afternoon.

With a good chance of partnering Paul di Resta at Force India, Adrian Sutil was in the VJM06. The German's best lap time was a 1:22.877. Jules Bianchi, Sutil's main rival for the seat will be testing the Force India tomorrow according to reports, when rain is expected.
“I'm convinced that Sahara Force India will also have a strong and competitive package for this season and my hope, of course, is that I can be with them to prove it,” he said.

In 9th was Mark Webber, with Vergne, Chilton and van der Garde in 10th, 11th and 12th respectively.

The last day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya this week is tomorrow.