Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari topped the timesheets on the third day of testing as continuous rain from mid-morning onwards restricted running and compromised programmes.

The day got off to cold but dry start during which time the fastest laps were posted, however, it wasn't long before the rain which had been forecast finally arrived. Towards the end of the day, conditions became so bad that the session was abandoned with around 45 minutes still remaining

For Alguersuari, who was taking over from Sebastien Buemi, once his quick time had been posted and the rain began to fall it was a case of the Catalan driver getting his first taste of this year's rain tyres. Starting on intermediates, in the light drizzle that began to fall, before switching to extremes when the rain intensified.

The Spaniard completed long runs on both types of rain tyre: the car ran reliably and the driver made no mistakes in the tricky conditions. He continues driving tomorrow, for the final day of this test, when rain is once again likely to be the order of the day.

Pedro de la Rosa was at the wheel for Sauber, taking over from Kamui Kobayashi, the Spaniard completed 58 laps as the Swiss team continues to make progress.

"We stopped when the rain became too heavy as there was no need to risk anything," said Giampaolo Dall'Ara. "In the morning we skipped our usual installation lap and went straight into the programme. We managed to do a baseline run in the dry and later focused on balancing the car in the wet. We scanned different set-ups and worked on the brake system. Pedro's comments on the car were quite positive in the wet. Nevertheless we certainly hope for better and dry track conditions tomorrow."

Adrian Sutil took over the VJM03, his programme following on from Liuzzi's schedule of the previous two days, with systems checks, long runs and set-up evaluation. The heavy rain and frequent red flags compromised some of the schedule, however the German completed 48 laps before an electrical fault halted him on track around 90 minutes before the end of the session.

"This morning it was nice to have some dry running," said the German. "The car is good and I think it's a positive place to start. I'm very confident on the general speed of the car. Unfortunately the rain came in quite early and then it was really waiting for reasonable conditions to go out. We had a problem in the afternoon that caused us to miss a bit of track time, but considering it was so wet it would have been very difficult to get a lot of running in anyway. I'm pleased to at least have had some dry running and some more time in the car and am looking forward to getting started again tomorrow.

"Today's programme attempted to condense dry weather testing into the start of the day," added chief race engineer, Dominic Harlow, "and following the expected onset of rain at mid-morning we moved to aerodynamic testing. Some further new components were introduced successfully and the intermediate and then wet conditions allowed Adrian to look at tyre options for these conditions. We had an issue that resulted in some downtime in the afternoon, but with the weather worsening it didn't cost us much track time and that is what testing with a new car is about."

Felipe Massa was on duty for Ferrari, the Brazilian having his third day at the wheel of the F10. He was only able to complete around twenty laps on dry tyres before having to run only with rain tyres, both intermediates and extremes for the remainder of the day.