» Lotus and Sauber run their challengers

Two teams used a break in the afternoon at Jerez to give their cars a quick shakedown ahead of Tuesday’s first official day of pre-season testing at the Spanish circuit, with Kamui Kobayashi giving the Sauber C31 a quick run, while returning World Champion Kimi Räikkönen getting an outing in Lotus F1’s E20.

While there is still technically an embargo on any running until Tuesday, teams are allowed exploit a loophole in the regulations that permits short introductory runs, ostensibly under the pretence of ‘filming purposes’.

It was Räikkönen’s second outing in F1 machinery in the space of a month, following his two-day outing in a 2010-spec Renault at Valencia in January.

McLaren is the only other team to have completed a shakedown run on its 2012 challenger, while Ferrari and Williams (which will officially launch its FW34 before testing kicks off on Tuesday) had to call off their shakedown runs due to the massive snowstorms that have hit much of Europe in the last couple of weeks.