Valencia Day 1: Massa ends as leader of the first 2010 tests

Felipe Massa on Ferrari made his great return to competition by setting the fastest time on the first day of testing in Valencia, Spain. The Brazilian remained the leader until the end of this day, marked by a brief red flag. With a lap time of 1:12.574, he sends a clear signal that he hasn’t lost any of his speed compared to last year before his terrible accident during the Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying.

Massa had already been the fastest in the morning before the break, and although he lost the first place at the beginning of the afternoon to Pedro de la Rosa in the BMW Sauber, he regained the top of the timesheets towards the end of the day. De la Rosa’s efforts may have been one of the biggest surprises of the first day. Only 24 hours after his BMW-Sauber team quietly launched its un-sponsored C29, de la Rosa demonstrated that the lack of support did not affect the team at all.

« For me, it was a very positive day, » said the Spaniard. « The car was reliable from the start. Therefore, we were able to follow our program without wasting time. Moreover, the car responded perfectly to our changes. For me, it was a day aimed at getting used not only to the new car but also to the team with all the staff. »

Just behind the Iberian, we find Michael Schumacher who is making his big return to F1. The German driver, who is racing for Mercedes this season, quickly picked up speed. The seven-time world champion took over from his teammate Rosberg shortly before 3:30 PM, consistently improving his lap times with new tires.

He finishes the day with a time of 1:12.947. He is only four-tenths slower than Massa but is more than half a second ahead of his teammate, Rosberg. Although test times are very difficult to interpret, Schumacher would have taken some pleasure in beating Rosberg on his first day in action…

The young German began his testing program with Mercedes GP the same morning, completing a total of 39 laps with a best time of 1:13.543 in track conditions probably not as favorable as in the afternoon. And despite the varying fuel loads, which make it difficult to judge the competitiveness of each, Rosberg is satisfied with the car.

« It felt good. There are so many new things that I don’t know. Is it a winning comeback or is it not? In general, the single-seater was going very well, but it is impossible to be sure of our performance today. »

Behind Rosberg, Gary Paffett fine-tuned the detailed systems of the McLaren MP4-25 and set the fifth fastest time, ahead of Rubens Barrichello for Williams. It was the latter who caused the only red flag of the day, shortly before 4:30 pm when he stopped on the track.

Sébastien Buemi finished the day in seventh place in the overall standings with his team, Scuderia Toro Rosso, which fought to fix a gearbox issue at the start of the race. He completed 10 laps in the morning and only returned to the track at the very end of the afternoon, giving him just enough time to overtake Robert Kubica in a Renault.

Valencia Private Test Results – Day 1 – Monday, February 1, 2009: