Fernando Alonso and Ferrari are definitely on fire this Wednesday, as the Spaniard recorded the fastest time of the week on Valencia's Ricardo Tormo circuit. Of course, we're not really sure the fuel strategy that the Scuderia decided to run on this week, but the lap times scored by the new Ferrari F10 seem to improve by the day.
Two and a half hours into the 3rd and last day of testing on the Spanish track, the 2-time world champion stunned the audience with a whooping time of 1:11.599. The Spaniard constantly improved his time throughout the duration of the morning session and remained the only one to stop the clock under one minute and 12 seconds.
Second overall was again BMW Sauber's Pedro de la Rosa, who was only 0.094 seconds away from breaking the 1:12.000 mark with his C29.
Michael Schumacher quickly returned to the Top 3 positions of the timing reports and improved his lap time to a personal best 1:12.438. Nevertheless, with a few more hours remaining to the end of the first official test of the off-season, Mercedes are still more than 8 tenths of a second behind their Italian rivals, presumably under the same fuel-load strategy.
Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari remained in contention for a place inside the overall Top 3, as he was the 4th and last driver from the testing pack to come within one second from Alonso before the lunch break. The Spanish teenager is now 0.977 seconds off the pace of the Ferrari-an.
In the meantime, Jenson Button is still struggling with his McLaren MP4-25, as he rests in 5th place, more than 2 seconds behind Alonso. Renault's Vitaly Petrov is 6th overall, followed by Williams' Nico Hulkenberg.
Oh, and another piece of valuable information for the F1 fans out there. With Alonso debuting in the Ferrari F10, more than 30,000 fans have fulled the grandstands of the Valencian circuit. Quite impressive!
Update: Alonso has further improved his time towards the lunch break, stopping the clock at 1:11.470.
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