Sauber's Sergio Perez was quickest at Barcelona on the penultimate day of pre-season testing as rain in the afternoon finally gave the teams the chance to run on 2012 wets and intermediates.

While the morning was held in ideal conditions, allowing the ten drivers on duty to post some of the fastest time this week, shortly after the lunch break dark clouds formed over the circuit and the first drops of rain began to fall. However, it was to be another couple of hours before the rain began in earnest allowing the teams to try Pirelli's wet tyres for the first time this year.

On his final day of pre-season testing Sergio Perez did 47 laps in the morning, including a qualifying simulation, posting the fastest lap of the Barcelona test so far on a set of soft compound tyres.

After lunch the Mexican continued for another 53 laps until the rain set in. He subsequently completed another couple of runs, now on the intermediate tyres, ending the day with another 114 laps on the C31.

"I am very happy with how my final test day went," said the Mexican. "We did an intensive programme with qualifying and race preparation, which was important to do. I think we have demonstrated that the car has developed well over the testing period. The team has made the most out of all the information we have collected and certainly is in good shape. Also personally I feel ready for Melbourne."

"We completed a good programme today," added head of track engineering, Giampaolo Dall'Ara. "To simulate qualifying was a good exercise for the team and the driver and all went fine. In the afternoon we also simulated procedures you have for a race start and pit stops during the race. After losing some track time in the early days of pre-season testing, we are now pretty happy with the mileage we have achieved. The team back in the factory obviously contributed a lot to the progress. Tomorrow Kamui will have a similar programme in the morning, but a different one in the afternoon."

Today marked Jenson Button's last day in the MP4-27, the Englishman, appropriately, spending the new race package the team will use in Australia. The morning was spent installing and understanding the new aero components, however, this was interrupted by a hydraulics issue which kept the car in the garage until after the lunch break.

The Woking outfit's programme was further disturbed by the rain shower, consequently today's proposed set-up, tyre-comparison work and a long run were postponed, and will be conducted by Lewis Hamilton tomorrow.

"When you get new parts, you want to go out and put lots of laps on it in order to compare it to what you had previously, but we weren't able to do that today," said Button. "We had a hydraulics issue in the morning, which meant we didn't do much running.

"So it wasn't the easiest morning," he continued, "and then we didn't do much running in the afternoon either because of the rain. We put a couple of good laps in but didn't get any set-up work done because of the rain.