Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo topped the timesheets at Barcelona today as the top three are covered by just 0.098s.

Pre-season testing stepped up a gear today as the teams ramped up the mileage, a number of them completing race distances, and the pace offering a tantalising glimpse of what could be a thrilling season.

Whilst Ricciardo was the clear winner in terms of pace and laps covered (143), Sergio Perez, Marcus Ericsson and Carlos Sainz each completed more than 100 laps, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg completed 155 (in a shared car) and Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa were both within 0.1s of the Australian.

Rosberg drove the Mercedes this morning, but in the afternoon, keen not to put too much pressure on the German who has been suffering an inflamed neck muscle - thought to be due to his sitting position in the F1 W06 - teammate Lewis Hamilton was drafted in, the Briton having clearly recovered from the fever which side-lined him yesterday. The world champion was soon running a race simulation and in the process completed 89 laps whilst also posting a best time 0.633s quicker than his teammate.

Having ground to a halt at the very start of the session, necessitating a rescue mission by his pit crew, Ricciardo was soon back to work, pounding around the Spanish track. Unfortunately his race simulation, which saw his full race crew in its positions and Adrian Newey joining the rest of the team on the pit-wall, was brought to a halt half-way through when Carlo Sainz spun off at T9 around ninety minutes after the lunch break.

There was another red flag later half-an-hour before the end of the session when Marcus Ericsson parked up on the pit straight.

While it is still expecting new parts following its MGU-K failure on Thursday, and therefore not expecting to do much significant running today, McLaren, and partner Honda, will be delighted to see Fernando Alonso complete 59 laps, the team's highest mileage thus far. Furthermore, the Spaniard was only 1.3s off the pace.

Though team boss Maurizio Arrivabene continues to play down expectations at Ferrari, the Italian team will be pleased to see Kimi Raikkonen continuing to run at the top of the timesheets, completing 90 laps in the process.

Still targeting just two wins this season, Arrivabene joked with reporters today that he is concerned there is something wrong with the Finn. "He keeps smiling," he revealed.

Another driver who will be smiling is Felipe Massa as Williams continues to look very strong, many suspecting that, like Mercedes, it has yet to show its hand.

While Sergio Perez is fourth on the sheets, with the second highest mileage (121 laps), let's not forget that this is the 2014 car.

Other than his spin, it was an impressive performance from Sainz, whilst Jolyon Palmer looked good in the Lotus, despite only completing 77 laps.

There's talk of a change in the weather tomorrow as pre-season testing reaches the midway mark. Despite a slow start to today, once they got going the guys certainly put the work in.

Ricciardo's fastest time was set at about 11.30 this morning on the soft tyre and never bettered. Raikkonen set his time at roughly the same point in the morning, using the soft tyre as well.

Perez was the only driver - as far as we can see so far - to use the new supersoft tyre. He climbed as high as third overall, behind Ricciardo and Raikkonen with a time set before lunch. In the afternoon, Massa went faster than him, using the soft tyre. In general, the teams concentrated more on performance in the morning, then long runs in the afternoon.

Ricciardo's morning session was given over to a mix of short runs and pit stop practice and shortly before the lunch break the Australian recorded the day's quickest lap on Pirelli's soft tyres. In the afternoon the team switched to medium and long runs and more tyre evaluation.

"It was good," said Ricciardo. "We wanted to get a day with a 100-plus laps on the board and we did that and more. It was very solid. We also got through some pit stop practice and some good long runs, which is very positive.

"I know it's just testing," he continued, "but it is encouraging seeing us on top or at least in that front group. Obviously you have no idea what everyone is doing, but it is encouraging. The car feels good. It has similar characteristics to RB10 in terms of how the chassis feels but that's a good thing, as I think we had a pretty good car last year. All in all a really good day's work."

"A good day for the whole team today and a very satisfying follow-up to yesterday," added Head of Race Engineering, Guillaume Rocquelin. "Day one was all about tuning the new elements we had brought here and it was always going to be a bit stop-start but by the end of yesterday we were on top of that and running well and today was the reward for all that hard work.

"We had a small issue on Daniel's installation lap, again caused by a software gremlin, but that was quickly sorted and we could get to work on the programme we had in place. In the morning that meant a lot of pit stop practice first thing, giving way to some tyre work in advance of our afternoon programme. We switched over to long runs in the afternoon and by the close of play we'd got through everything we wanted to on the day."