Barca Day Two: Hulkenberg topples Alonso

Nico Hulkenberg put an end to Fernando Alonso's reign on Friday at Barcelona, narrowly edging ahead of the Ferrari driver to claim the week's fastest lap time.

The second day of the final pre-season test got underway under blue skies and with an unprecedented four hours of uninterrupted running.

Fernando Alonso was quickest in the morning as the Spaniard focused on short stints, completing three five-lap runs, each quicker than the previous. That saw the Ferrari driver drop the benchmark time to a 1:20.637, which, at least in the morning, proved to be unbeatable.

Pedro de la Rosa and Tonio Liuzzi came the closest to challenging Alonso as both the Sauber and Force India driver got within half a second off his P1 time. It was a tightly fought contest as Sebastian Vettel and Jaime Alguersuari were also less than a second behind Alonso.

What made it more remarkable is that there have not been many occasions this year in pre-season testing where five drivers were separated by less than a second. That is largely due to the ban on refuelling, which means drivers can be running on anything from fumes to 160kgs of fuel.

After the hour-long lunch break, the teams resumed running but, unlike in the morning, red flags caused havoc on some of the teams' programmes.

With many in the field taking on long distance runs, Jarno Trulli's stoppage at Turn Six, caused by a hydraulic failure on steering wheel rack, sent everyone back into the pits.

Force India, who were in the middle of a race simulation with Liuzzi, explained their process for the red flag: "Red flag, unfortunate. Car won't be touched now until the track goes green so race sim can be resumed."

The drivers were soon back out on track where Nico Hulkenberg, who had been languishing down in eighth place, launched his attack, slowly making his way up the order.

While his rivals were on long stints, Hulkenberg turned his attention to two-flying laps qualy style runs, moving up to fifth, second and then first with a blistering 1:20.614.

Williams celebrated Hulkenberg's achievement on Twitter: "Take that Fernando! The Hulk just took your number 1 spot! 1.20.614!"

The day's second red flag belonged to Sebastian Vettel, who came to a halt for an as yet undisclosed reason.

The session resumed with half an hour left on the clock and stopped just a few minutes later when Trulli once again brought out the red flags.

With 11 minutes remaining some of the drivers ventured out for a final run, however, Alonso put paid to that when the Spaniard brought the session to a halt for the final time.

"A very intense afternoon for Alonso. Race simulation completed successfully. Now there is a lot of work for the engineers to analyse the data," Ferrari reported just moments before Alonso's red flag.

So Hulkenberg finished at the top of the timesheets ahead of Alonso, de la Rosa and Liuzzi.

Vettel and Alguersuari were next in line while Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton completed the top eight ahead of Robert Kubica.

As for the battle of the newcomers, Lotus narrowly beat Virgin Racing to 10th place on the timesheets with Trulli just 0.428s ahead of Timo Glock.

Unofficial Times
1. N. Hulkenberg Williams FW32 1:20.614 99 laps
2. F. Alonso Ferrari F10 1:20.637 +0.023 134 laps
3. P. de la Rosa Sauber C29 1:20.973 +0.359 114 laps
4. V. Liuzzi Force India VJM-03 1:21.056 +0.442 90 laps
5. S. Vettel Red Bull Racing RB6 1:21.258 +0.644 125 laps
6. J. Alguersuari Toro Rosso STR5 1:21.571 +0.957 104 laps
7. M. Schumacher Mercedes GP W01 1:21.689 +1.075 85 laps
8. L. Hamilton McLaren MP4-25 1:22.152 +1.538 93 laps
9. R. Kubica Renault R30 1:24.912 +4.298 53 laps
10. J. Trulli Lotus F1 T127 1:25.524 +4.910 70 laps
11. T. Glock Virgin Racing VR-01 1:25.942 +5.328 52 laps

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