Williams Pastor Maldonado posted the quickest time of the day on the penultimate day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya, the Venezuelan setting his best time on the Pirelli super-soft rubber.

The 2010 GP2 champion, like most of his rivals, posted his best time in the morning session, with only Paul di Resta managing to improve in the afternoon.

"It was a good day today, as we completed all of our planned programme with no issues," said the Venezuelan. "We have put more mileage on the car which is great for everyone here and back at the factory as we now have a lot more data to analyse. The car is progressing well and I feel everything is going in the right direction.

"It has been a very pleasing day," added Mark Gillan, "with Pastor successfully completing his whole run plan, covering 106 trouble-free laps. We started with some aerodynamic correlation runs, followed by race weekend preparation and set-up optimisation. In the background, we also ran some bodywork cooling sweeps throughout the day.

Second quickest, and probably a better barometer of real pace, was Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes WO3. The German, completed 127 laps running on the soft and hard compounds as he worked his way through the planned test programme. In the afternoon the German completed the first full race simulation for the new car, including live pit stops

"I'm very happy with the race simulation that we ran this afternoon," said Schumacher. "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.

"The small things from the last two days I would rate as typical testing issues," he added. "So from my side, I am happy with our first full testing session, and we have definitely improved our game which is what we wanted to achieve. To what extent, we can only see later, but I am finishing with a positive feeling."

Kamui Kobayashi was back at the wheel of the Sauber C31 for what the Swiss outfit described as a "a straightforward test day", with no noteworthy problems but a "programme that excites engineers rather than fans".

The Japanese driver, who completed 99 laps on his way to posting a best time of 1:23.582, mostly carried out set-up and aero work, including a comparison between two different rear wings.

"It was my first day of driving the new car here in Barcelona, and it was a good one," he said at the end of the session. "We had no noteworthy problems all day and went through a lot of test items. I can feel we have made some progress compared to the test in Jerez. But, of course, we have a lot more work to do and there is room for improvement."