FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Maldonado quickest at Barcelona

Pastor Maldonado set the third day pace at the Barcelona pre-season F1 test with a lap set on Pirelli's supersoft compound rubber in the Williams FW34. Both the Venezuelan and technical chief Mark Gillan expressed themselves satisfied with progress.

Pastor Maldonado (1:22.391) set the third day pace at the Barcelona pre-season F1 test with a lap set on Pirelli's supersoft compound rubber in the Williams FW34.

Both the Venezuelan and technical chief Mark Gillan expressed themselves satisfied with progress.

Second quickest was Michael Schumacher, who ran no fewer than 127 laps in the Mercedes W03. So, no dispensations for being 43...

"I'm very happy with the race simulation that we ran this afternoon," Schumacher said. "It confirmed what we have seen from the first tests with our new car, and that we don't seem to have any big issues with reliability. We have definitely improved our game."

Just a couple of tenths slower was Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber (1:23.582). The team's Giampaolo Dall'Ara said: "Kamui's programme was mainly about improving and confirming what we understand.

"For example, we were looking for improvements in the front tyre warm-up, evaluating different aero parts and ran different suspension configurations. It was a productive day but tomorrow's programme should become a bit more exciting for the outside world."

Jenson Button (1:23.918) was second only to Schumacher for daily mileage, at the wheel of McLaren's MP4-27.

"We've done a lot of reliability work over the past three days - more than 100 laps on each day. Most of that has been longer runs, getting used to the feeling of the car and doing set-up work," Button explained.

"We've also been really working hard to understand this year's Pirelli tyres and getting the car to work efficiently on them. That's a key part of the programme.

"There are a lot of cars out there that look competitive so we'll keep pushing. We should hopefully bring our upgrade package to the next test and that will see us through to the first race in Melbourne."

Jean-Eric Vergne (1:24.433) ran all day on Pirelli's medium tyre as he conducted aero evaluation for Toro Rosso.

"The STR7 has performed well on this track, which is always a true test of how a car is performing," the Frenchman related. "Towards the end of the day I had my first experience of proper F1 pit stops. It was a scary feeling at the beginning, coming in at 100 km/h and seeing so many people. At first, I was worried about hitting someone but I got used to it. It's an exciting experience!"

Mark Webber's morning running in the Red Bull RB8 (1:24.771) was hampered by a gearbox problem but an afternoon race simulation went to plan.

Red Bull's Ian Morgan reported: "Mark then went out for his race simulation this afternoon a bit cold, but he managed to put a whole race distance on and the gearbox ran flawlessly.

"We stopped a couple of laps earlier than planned because we saw something in the data, but in the end it was nothing. So, while we had a limited morning, the afternoon was a pretty good recovery."

Felipe Massa (1:24.771) set the same time as Webber down to the last thousandth of a second as he continued to put the F2012 Ferrari through its paces.

Paul Di Resta (1:25.646) concentrated on an aero programme for Force India, running on hard and medium compound tyres all day, but losing a bit of time to a bodywork issue with the VJM05.

Timo Glock (1:26.173) shook off the winter cobwebs in the MaRussia, while new Caterham driver Vitaly Petrov (1:26.448) brought up the rear with the CT01.