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Felipe Massa marked his official return to contemporary Formula 1 machinery with the fastest time on the first morning of pre-season testing at Valencia in Spain on Monday.



Having seen early shakedown plans for his new Ferrari F10 abandoned because of bad weather in Italy over the weekend, Massa gave an early indication about the promise of his team's 2010 challenger with a strong run early on.



Although testing times are not necessarily truly representative of form, Ferrari will at least be encouraged by the fact that the car has appeared to hit the ground running on the opening day of this three-day test.



Less than two-tenths behind Massa's best lap of 1m13.088s was Pedro de la Rosa in the BMW Sauber C29, showing that his team's lack of sponsors and BMW works involvement have not been a hindrance to the efforts made over the winter to produce the new car.

Third fastest Nico Rosberg spent the early hours of the test watching from the garage, as his Mercedes GP team checked out the new W01 following its first installation lap, but he slowly improved his times over the morning before handing the car over to team-mate Michael Schumacher.



McLaren had test driver Gary Paffett on hand for the first day of running for the new MP4-25, which had been launched last week. He was fourth fastest, ahead of Rubens Barrichello in the Williams and Robert Kubica in the Renault.



Sebastien Buemi only managed to complete 10 laps in the first hours of running, as his Scuderia Toro Rosso outfit work on ironing out the normal new car niggles.

Morning times: Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m13.088s 32 2. Pedro de la Rosa BMW Sauber 1m13.247s 27 3. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m13.543s 39 4. Gary Paffett McLaren 1m14.018s 34 5. Rubens Barrichello Williams 1m14.449s 42 6. Robert Kubica Renault 1m15.298s 37 7. Sebatien Buemi Toro Rosso 1m19.279s 10