Fernando Alonso finished Wednesday's testing at Valencia with the fastest lap time on his first day behind the wheel of the team's 2010 car, the F10.
Around 36,000 fans are reported to have attended the track, with their double champion undoubtedly a major draw and they were not disappointed. Alonso completed 127 laps, the most of anyone on the day and his best lap of 1:11.470 put him six-tenths clear of Pedro de la Rosa.
“I've been waiting for this moment for months and finally it's here,” Fernando said at the tests' end. “We worked at lot at the works over the last weeks, but I was still missing the experience on the track. Today I concentrated mainly on getting to know the car. There were many new things for me here, such as the Schubert helmet and the Brembo brakes I had never used before. I must say that I felt at ease immediately thanks to Felipe's work during the last days.”
“It's far too early to say anything. There are so many unknown factors and it's a bit like training for football teams, you never know if they're playing with two goalies or only with their second team. It's true, we drove many laps over the last three days. To be competitive you need a reliable car and we're on the right track. The technicians have lots of data now to prepare us the best possible way for the next tests. It's important that the data we had before we came here has been confirmed on the track. We need to continue like this and in the last tests, we need to try to find the car's limit.”
