While nine teams continued at Sakhir, Williams and Spyker began a three day test at the Circuit de Catalunya.

The Grove cars continue to show good pace with Nico Rosberg's best time the third quickest posted at the Spanish track this year. However, with only Spyker for competition it's almost impossible to see how the British team shapes up against the real opposition.

"Nico tested the Melbourne aero upgrade today and then spent the rest of the session carrying out long runs," said Dickie Stanford. "He completed a full race distance, together with pit stops and refuelling.

"Alex, meanwhile, worked on mapping and set-up tests," he added. Both drivers will continue here tomorrow in preparation for Australia."

It was a busy day for Spyker which had four drivers on duty, as Mike Gascoyne explains: "A very useful first day of testing, continuing on from the work we did in Valencia.

"In the morning Christijan and Adrian completed their allotted programme of set-up work and performance evaluation. Both were pleased with the balance and grip of the car, which was noticeably better this time out in Barcelona.

"Giedo van der Garde and Fairuz Fauzy took over in the afternoon and while Fairuz did a full race simulation without problems, Giedo's mileage was limited following a precautionary engine change early on. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the mechanics, he could only complete installation checks.

"Tomorrow Christijan and Adrian will do a full day's testing, running through a continuation of today's programme."

"It was OK today," said Albers, "we made good progress and are going in the right direction. Again today was a learning day, trying to get as much information as possible, and I think it went pretty well. Tomorrow we'll be working on set-up for Melbourne and trying to find as much performance as possible."

"This morning we did some set-up work and new tyre runs," added Sutil, "plus checking and finding balance. Today was effectively the first proper day of testing at Barcelona as last time out we had to run through initial programmes, but now you can really see the benefit of the work we put in Valencia. The tyres are working much more effectively on the first few laps."

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