Fernando Alonso tops the timesheets as Sebastian Vettel, sidelined by an electrical issue for the entire morning, finishes third just ahead of Lewis Hamilton. Toro Rosso rookie Jean-Eric Vergne is second.

Alonso continued with the task of acquiring data relating to the behaviour of the F2012. Once again, most of the Spaniard's laps today were completed at constant speed, or to a predefined procedure, aimed at gathering as much information as possible about the car, comparing various configurations.

Jean-Eric Vergne, in the Toro Rosso, completed double the laps Alonso completed on his way to posting the second best time of the day, 0.720s off the pace.

"A good second day for me as we worked through everything on our work plan and completed a lot of kilometres," said the Frenchman. "After making some adjustments, I feel more comfortable in the car and I can also get an understanding of the effect of the set-up changes that we tried and they seem to have moved us forward. A positive day, so now I'm looking forward to the second test session."

"Overall, a positive first test for us," added chief engineer, Laurent Mekies. "There is plenty of excitement when you run a new car for the first time, as it is the result of so much work from everyone in the organisation. We did a reasonable amount of laps and we did not have any major issues with the car. This meant we were able to start our work of getting to know everything about it and understand how to make it work as well as possible. In parallel to this, we were running Daniel and Jean-Eric for the first time since they were signed as our race drivers: they both did well, establishing their relationship with the team. We are looking forward to running again in Barcelona in just over a week, as these four days went by very quickly."

Ominously, despite losing the entire morning session, bar two installation laps, Vettel finished third quickest. The problem was an engine related electrical issue and while the relevant part was replaced there was concern that the issue may have caused damage to the engine, which led to a precautionary engine change.

The German got running again shortly after lunch and then put in 48 untroubled laps to bring the team's opening test to a close and, despite the shortened second day in the car, the world champion left the track encouraged by the weeks' work.

"I'm happy with the progress we've made, I think we managed to get a lot done," said Vettel. "Of course, this morning was a bit of a setback but these things happen.