Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi posts the fastest time of the day, indeed the week, as the first of two pre-season tests at the Circuit de Catalunya comes to a close.

With HRT still working on its 2012 car, Lotus working on the problem that caused it to withdraw from this week's test and Marussia, running its 2011 car, sidelined by a suspension problem, there were only 9 drivers on duty. Nonetheless, between them they completed 983 laps, almost 3000 miles.

It was another positive day for the Swiss team as it evaluated further test items in the morning, carying out qualifying practice before lunch and longer runs in the afternoon.

"I'm quite happy," said the Japanese driver. "We achieved a very good mileage today. The set up changes we did in the morning meant an improvement in lap times, which, of course, is very positive. There is still a lot of work to do in terms of understanding the car and the different tyre compounds at different fuel levels, but we are working in the right direction. I think it was a good test for us."

"It was another positive test day for us," added Giampaolo Dall'Ara. "We started in the morning with some further aero comparisons and set-up work. Before lunch Kamui did qualifying runs. Qualifying was actually a weakness of ours in the last two seasons and we have to resolve this. This obviously requires proper practice.

"Kamui started with the medium compound before he used two sets of soft tyres, and in the end he got his first taste of the 2012 super soft compound. He did his fastest lap on the second set of softs. This lap time now stands as the overall fastest for this week, but of course this doesn't mean much because proper comparisons are never possible during testing with each team running different programmes. In the afternoon we did longer runs for race preparation."

Having posted the quickest time yesterday, a time widely dismissed by the many sceptics within the paddock, Pastor Maldonado continued to set a strong pace today, the Venezuelan finishing second, just 0.249s shy of Kobayashi's best. Along with set-up work, Maldonado com[pleted a full race simulation.

"It has been a positive test for the team," said the Venezuelan. "We've had no problems with the car, getting in some good mileage across all four days. We now have a great deal of data to analyse so we will keep pushing to improve our car for the next test. I am looking forward to coming back next week for the final test, and getting back to racing very soon."

"We've had a really productive day's testing to end an excellent couple of weeks," added Mark Gillan. "Today Pastor went through a competitive race simulation and both the car and he performed very well, ending the day with some long run comparisons. We have gathered a prodigious amount of data over more than 3500kms of testing and we will now regroup back at the factory to understand how to further improve the set-up and development direction ahead of the next Barcelona test."