On the second day of testing at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen topped the timesheets, posting a best time 0.6s quicker than his nearest rival, Ferrari's Felipe Massa.

With conditions staying clear for the second day of the test, McLaren, which had both Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton on duty, continued with its programme of accumulating miles on the MP4-23 and endurance testing components. This saw work focused on carrying out long runs throughout the day with both cars, the Woking duo completing 207 laps.

For Ferrari, Massa and Kimi Raikkonen continued with development of the F2008, concentrating chiefly on set-ups, reliability and starts. The Brazilian was the cause of a red flag early in the session, stopping out on track. However, it turned out to be a false alarm.

Williams continues to impress, with Kazuki Nakajima today out-pacing Nico Rosberg. However, the Japanese driver was in the FW29B, whilst the German continued with the new car unveiled on Monday.

Splitting the Williams was Fernando Alonso, once again cheered on by thousands of adoring fans. The Spaniard, at the wheel of the new R28, completed his third consecutive day of work with the team this week. Having completed a successful shakedown of the car earlier this week, the French team turned its attention to work on improving the balance of the car.

For the afternoon, the team made the most of ideal track conditions to validate set-up options and complete some long runs with the car. The team also did some practice starts and carried out some pit stop training as the day came to a close.

Alonso was pleased to have had a sustained period in the car, before Nelson Piquet Jr takes over tomorrow, the Brazilian getting his first taste of the R28.

"The purpose of this test was to start running the new car and to try to understand how it works," said the Spaniard. "My final day went well and again we ran without any problems and covered a lot of laps, but the time to improve the car will be during the next few test sessions. I feel very much at ease with the team and every day I feel more and more comfortable with the car. The next test cannot come soon enough. It was nice to see the support of the fans here today and that is always a big motivation."

"It was a more interesting day for the engineers," added Christian silk, "as we carried out a more set-up based programme to try and find a good balance with the car. It all went to plan with the car responding well to all the changes we made, so it's been a very encouraging day with good reliability. We also did some pit-stop practice towards the end of the day, which is normal procedure for a test."

With David Coulthard having had two days in the new car, one at Jerez last week and another yesterday here in Valencia, today it was Mark Webber's turn to try the Red Bull RB4 for the first time.

After making adjustments to his seat and driving position, Webber got down to business and the car ran almost faultlessly all day. The Australian got acclimatised to what will be his home for this year's eighteen races and, apart from the usual development work, he also did some aero testing with generally positive results.

"I'm happy with the new car," said the Australian, who continues here tomorrow. "Today has been encouraging and, so far, it seems to be a big step forward from last year in terms of reliability and speed, which is great. Now we need to work with what we've got and get it as fast as possible before Melbourne. We've got a big four weeks coming up."