Alonso ended the first hour of the morning session with the best time of 1:11.905, almost 4 tenths of a second faster than second placed Pedro de la Rosa. The BMW Sauber driver again made a huge impression during the first outings of the Wednesday testing, as he was the one to set the first benchmark of the day.
Third overall in the standings was Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari, the Spaniard being only the 3rd driver after one hour to drop under the one minute and 14 seconds mark. After 11 laps on the circuit, Michael Schumacher had to settle for the 4th best time of the day, ahead of Renault's Vitaly Petrov and Williams' Nico Hulkenberg.
Jenson Button also debuted on his brand new McLaren MP4-25 in the early minutes of the Wednesday testing, but his installation laps were the only ones that counted on the scoreboard. The reigning world champion only did 3 laps during the entire first hour, recording the best time of 1:32.980.
The first hour of the testing session was not incident-free, as Pedro de la Rosa's car stopped on track 25 minutes into the morning session. Some 15 minutes later, the session was restarted.
Here are the times after the first hour of testing. We'll keep you updated with the latest action from Valencia during the course of the entire day.
1 Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) 1:11.905 - 14 laps
2 Pedro de la Rosa (Sauber) 1:12.294 - 6 laps
3 Jaime Alguersuari (Toro Rosso) 1:12.576 - 17 laps
4 Michael Schumacher (Mercedes) 1:14.594 - 11 laps
5 Vitaly Petrov (Renault) 1:17.425 - 9 laps
6 Nico Hulkenberg (Williams) 1:17.723 - 5 laps
7 Jenson Button (McLaren) 1:32.980 - 3 laps
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