Consolidated times of 2012 pre season testing Jerez Spain

I put together the consolidated times for the 4 days of Jerez preseason testing. My objective is to read thru this times and find some base for discussions. Here are the consolidated times at Jerez:

(1)  Rosberg            Mercedes       1m17.613s (2011 car)
(2)  Grosjean          Lotus               1m18.419s
(3)  Schumacher    Mercedes        1m18.561s (2011 car)
(4)  Alonso              Ferrari            1m18.877s
(5)  Webber            Red Bull          1m19.184s
(6)  Vettel               Red Bull          1m19.297s
(7)  Hamilton          McLaren        1m19.464s
(8)  Ricciardo         Toro Rosso     1m19.587s
(9)  Vergne             Toro Rosso     1m19.597s
(10) Raikkonen      Lotus              1m19.670s
(11) Perez               Sauber            1m19.770s
(12) Di Resta          Force India    1m19.772s
(13) Kobayashi       Sauber           1m19.834s
(14) Hulkenberg    Force India    1m19.977s
(15) Senna              Williams         1m20.132s
(16) Bianchi            Force India    1m20.221s
(17) Massa              Ferrari           1m20.454s
(18) Button             McLaren        1m20.688s
(19) Maldonado     Williams          1m21.197s
(20) Kovalainen     Caterham       1m21.518s
(21) De la Rosa       HRT                1m22.128s
(22) Trulli               Caterham       1m22.198s
(23) Der Garde      Caterham       1m23.324s

All of the F1 news outlets and even the team managers are saying that lap times do not matter at this time since they are just testing parts, figuring out how the car behaves, etc, etc, etc. Anyhow I am a stats-oriented person, so here my analysis:

Mercedes: So far only testing the 2011 car with the new pirelli spec tire to have a base for the 2012 car. Is this the winning strategy? or their 2012 car was not ready for prime time? We will see how this plays into the championship. Rosberg managed to be faster than Schumacher. We do not know if they were running the blown diffuser (high downforce), so we can not have any conclusions.

Lotus: Great run for Grosjean, his best lap time very similar to Schumacher. If Mercedes 2011 car was indeed running the blown diffuser then Lotus have a very competitive car. Raikkonen surprised on day 1 of pre season testing. But then kept a low profile for the rest of days. We should keep any on his moves.

Ferrari: Mix results, hard to read. On the one hand, we have Massa with uncompetitive lap times as he only managed 17th place. On the other hand, Alonso managed the 4th best lap time. Smoking gun? Some say he was running low fuel, but who knows? Still if we take Grosjean as the reference, Alonso was 0.4s off the pace.

Red Bull: It appears they are not hiding anything, both Vettel and Webber have a similar racing pace, Webber faster by 0.1s. The fact that both are so close in lap times could mean that they got the formula right. They did not want to show off, just yet. Long runs, testing components.

McLaren: Same as Ferrari with mixed results. Hamilton very close to the Red Bulls (+0.2s), but Button down in the order and close to Massa. None of them, neither Hamilton nor Button tried to impress during the testing. Very quiet so far on their impressions about the car. Maybe Hamilton did not want to impress and remain quiet for the week due to the Sutil affair.

Toro Rosso: The best of the rest, very, very close to McLaren. They might find themselves leading the mid-field, or at least it appears so far.

Sauber and Force India: Very competitive between each other, if both teams can gain some tenths of a second, they can join Toro Rosso in the fight for the best of rest.

Williams: A bit of mixed results. We found Senna lapping very similar to the Saubers and Force Indias, but on the other end Maldonado (on his second year at Williams) was closer to the end of the field. Have they improved? time will tell.

Caterham and HRT: Definitely needs improvement, specially HRT since their car still missing some key crash tests to pass FIA homologation. Caterham bringing 3 drivers so they get maximum time. Similar to Force India strategy.

Final conclusions: Lotus = Surprise, Red Bull = same pace of 2011, Ferrari = McLaren = mixed results , Mercedes = show me the 2012 car.