Paul Hembery, Pirelli Motorsport Director: “We expect one or two stops in the race in Valencia”

Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso set the fastest time in the second free practice session at the Valencia road circuit, using the PZero Yellow soft tyres. The two-time World Champion's time of 1m37.968s narrowly beat the one he recorded last year in FP2.

After being tested by the teams during free practice in Canada, the PZero White medium made their debut as nominated tires during a race weekend. In the first session of the morning, the fastest was Red Bull Racing driver Mark Webber who, with the new PZero Whites, set a time of 1m40.403s: again, faster than in the respective session last year (1m41.175s, Nico Rosberg).

The four fastest drivers – Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher – are within just four tenths of a second and belong to four different teams, demonstrating the performance and versatility of PZero tires on a wide range of cars .

The sky was overcast all day, with ambient temperatures of 27 degrees centigrade and a maximum asphalt temperature of 38 degrees. When the cars first hit the track, the grip was extremely poor, with a lot of dirt and debris, and only in the afternoon did the surface start to rubber.

This meant the track got progressively faster, with Alonso's time set in the afternoon just half a second behind last year's pole. The time difference between FP1 and the pole time in 2010 was 3,588s; one of the biggest differences of the year and a clear sign of how quickly this circuit can evolve. The weather forecast for the remainder of the weekend indicates conditions will improve, with high temperatures expected on Saturday and Sunday.

The comment of Pirelli Motorsport Director, Paul Hembery: “Today was a very encouraging start for the new PZero White medium and PZero Yellow soft, in terms of performance and durability. This is the most abrasive road circuit we will encounter all season, but we expect only one or two pitstops for most drivers and a difference of around a second and a half per lap between the medium and soft compounds. With the new medium tyre, we should have a range of around 30 laps in the race and around 20 laps with the soft compound, in line with the objectives we have set for this event."

The fact:

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio. The Argentine driver won 13 grand prix with Pirelli, from Monaco 1950 (the second victory ever for Pirelli) to Germany 1957. Fangio also won the World Championship with Pirelli in 1951, 1954 and 1957 – becoming the driver of greatest success of the Italian company.