Lotus end winter testing in style

Lotus ended winter testing on a high on a day when Red Bull ran into problems and Ferrari finally admitted they have one with their new car.

Lotus ended winter testing on a high after wrapping up the Barcelona test in impressive style on a day when Red Bull ran into problems and Ferrari finally admitted they have one with their new car. Whilst the pecking order ahead of the new season remains unclear, it is now beyond dispute that Ferrari have fallen back from the lead runners following the admission of Luca Colajanni, the team's head of communications, to Sky Sports News that "it is clear we are behind schedule and we cannot be happy". The suspicion that the Italian outfit may have been usurped by Lotus behind Red Bull and probably McLaren was reinforced by another strong set of numbers from the Enstone outfit, with Kimi Raikkonen ending the day at the top of the timesheets after setting the fastest time when the teams concentrated on qualifying-style runs in the morning. Just as significantly, Raikkonen continued to perform strongly in a race simulation in the afternoon, with Lotus' long runs comparing to those set by Lewis Hamilton for McLaren as the Woking outfit set about putting plenty of mileage into the MP4-27's revised package. In total, Hamilton completed 115 laps, with the reliability of the McLaren in sharp contrast to the frustration at Red Bull after their running was limited to just 23 laps after Sebastian Vettel broke the RB8's front-wing during an early-morning off-track excursion and his car then suffering a gearbox malfunction. Given that Red Bull only introduced their new exhaust system on Saturday morning, those twin misfortunes - and resultant shortage of running - will surely leave the team in something of a quandary about which of their two packages to run in Melbourne. Mercedes, meanwhile, continued to make steady progress, with the work of Michael Schumacher also focused on long runs. In total, Michael registered exactly one hundred laps with his best time of 1:22.939 leaving him eighth in the timesheets. Elsewhere, reliability woes weren't exclusive to Red Bull, with Force India abandoning their race simulation and Sauber early departees from the circuit after an engine failure on Kamui Kobayashi's C31. Caterham also ended the day prematurely, with Vitaly Petrov bringing out the red flags with twenty minutes of the session remaining. In view of Colajanni's admission, it was rather ironical that Alonso ended the day second fastest, while Vettel's absence from the morning running meant that he suffered the rare ignominy of propping up the timesheets. Though the winter has provided little in the way of clarity, we can at least be sure that such a fate will not befall the World Champion in two weeks' time when the season begins. Final Day Four Times:
Kimi Raikkonen Lotus 1:22.030 121 laps
Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:22.250 115
Bruno Senna Williams 1:22.296 53
Nico Hulkenberg Force India 1:22.312 101
Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 1:22.386 72
Lewis Hamilton McLaren 1:22.430 115
Vitaly Petrov Caterham 1:22.795 101
Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1:22.939 100
Pastor Maldonado Williams 1:23.430 48
Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso 1:23.393 100
Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1:23.608 23