Jerez – Day 2: Alonso! The return of the king?

Fernando Alonso was back on track after more than 3 months of inactivity and the Spaniard did not disappoint. For this second day of private testing on the Spanish circuit of Jerez, the Renault driver topped the timesheets.

Alonso was trying out the somewhat evolved Renault R27 for the first time. He completed 70 laps during the day, finding his best time in his last two runs, during a qualifying simulation.

Pedro de la Rosa, ultimately 4th yesterday, positions himself second today, over a tenth behind.

Ferraris, which dominated yesterday, are less performant today, with notably completely different setups. Kimi Räikkönen is 3rd, ahead of Nico Rosberg in an FW29 still very similar to the FW28 despite being in the colors of Williams’ 30 years in F1.

Felipe Massa finishes 5th ahead of Heikki Kovalainen in the second McLaren. The Finn was the most enduring today. He completed 130 laps. These last 4 drivers are within less than 80 thousandths of each other.

The Red Bull drivers continue the ranking with the two Toro Rossos of Vettel and Bourdais (leading at 12 PM) – respectively 7th and 8th – while Mark Webber, who took over from Coulthard, is 9th for the last day on the track with the RB3 – the Austrian team is presenting the RB4 tomorrow.

The Toyota drivers, despite the new TF108, are far down in the standings. Glock, who dominated Kobayashi, is only 11th while the test driver is in last place after experiencing significant overheating issues.

Fisichella slots between the two Toyotas in 12th place and is only one second behind the leader of the day.

For this second of the four scheduled days for certain teams, there were only 5 red flags, as the conditions were significantly better than the day before.

Jerez – Day 2 – Spain