Early days but Super Aguri will be exceedingly heartened by the fact that Anthony Davidson topped the timesheets at Jerez today, outpacing the Renault R27s of Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen.

Conditions were slightly cooler to start with than on Day 1, but it became brighter and warmer as the day progressed.

Davidson's programme comprised of continued analysis of the Bridgestone Potenza tyres with low fuel runs towards the end of the morning session, with some extended runs in the afternoon. The Englishman completed a staggering 145 laps.

Takuma Sato will conclude the test for the Japanese team tomorrow, the final day of testing here this week.

Following on from his completion of a successful programme of reliability running yesterday, Fisichella began work on initial set-up changes with the new car today. He made good progress, in spite of an on-track stoppage during the afternoon, and managed to begin working on understanding the car's reactions on the new Bridgestone Potenza tyres.

"We had another good day with the R27 as we started looking at some set-up changes, and understanding the handling," said the Italian. "We made improvements through the day, and the progress confirmed the potential I could feel in the package during our reliability work yesterday.

"We have had a very encouraging week so far, although there are still some problems to fix, like with any new car. But that is what winter testing is all about: every problem we find here, is one that we don't have to worry about in Melbourne in two months' time."

Kovalainen's day got off to a slow start after electrical gremlins limited his programme to just two installation laps until the afternoon. Once these problems had been resolved, he was able to complete two thirds of a race simulation, which will be completed tomorrow.

"It was a slightly frustrating day for me," admitted the Finn, "because we didn't really start our work properly until this afternoon, and after that our focus was to put miles on the car. So not a perfect day for me, but at this stage, the important thing is to get a feel for the handling, and make sure the package is reliable - it's not about setting the stopwatch on fire. We had a good end to the day with some longer runs, so hopefully we can carry on our momentum tomorrow in order to catch up on the programme."

So far, the team has completed over 1300 km with the new car this week, which comfortably exceeds the total mileage during the first test session of 2006

Nico Rosberg was on duty for Williams, taking over from Kazuki Nakajima. The German, driving the FW28, completed 75 laps on his way to posting the third fastest time of the day.

"Today we continued with traction control comparisons," revealed test team manager, Mike Condliffe. "Later in the session, we evaluated various set-up options and tested various software developments in preparation for the launch of the new car."