Lotus' Pastor Maldonado topped the timesheets on the second, and final day, of the second in-season test.

With ideal conditions from the outset there was plenty of running, while the warmer temperatures meant we saw quicker lap times than those seen yesterday or over the Grand Prix weekend.

Pastor Maldonado ended the second day fastest by almost a second after 102 trouble-free and extremely productive laps. He set a time of 1:24.871s using super soft tyres late in the afternoon after completing numerous aero and set-up evaluations under glorious blue skies.

"That was a complete day for us and my first normal day of testing this season," said the Venezuelan. "We didn't have any problems and we gained a lot of good running with good track conditions compared to yesterday's. We ran to plan and completed everything we wanted to do. We learnt a lot more about the car, the set-up and performance is improving all the time so I'm feeling more comfortable to push too. It's been a big step forward today which hopefully means we'll be much better for the rest of the season."

"We completed everything we set out to do today including aero assessments, mapping work, energy recovery scenarios, evaluations of set-up and ride height, tyre usage programmes and so on," beamed Trackside Operations Director, Alan Permane, "and I'm pleased to say the E22 didn't miss a beat.

"We completed over 100 laps today so it's been very good to see what is possible when we have good reliability. With the data we have collected over the last two days and the progress we've made, we're in much better shape heading to the next races. There is plenty of potential in the E22."

Second quickest was Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes, the German team the centre of much of the attention today. Sadly, the interest in the team wasn't so much down to its dominance in the opening stages of the season but rather the much Brackley-based outfit's much talked about solution to the lack of noise from the 2014 spec engines.

Today's programme began with a trial run of the 'megaphone' exhaust tailpipe as requested by the FIA while the remainder of running time focused on aero, braking and control systems evaluation, in addition to practice starts. The hard and medium tyres were used in the morning, the medium again in the afternoon.

"Days like today are so valuable as you can't really test anything effectively during a race weekend," said Rosberg. "No one run is the same as another, whereas here you can keep certain variables stable and properly compare things back-to-back.

"Everyone was talking about the exhaust but to be honest I didn't notice much difference in the sound. Of course, we're happy to try these things if that's what the FIA and the fans want us to do. But perhaps this was not the right solution.

"One of the main things we looked at was braking," he added. "This is an area where I haven't felt 100% happy yet this year, so we're continuously assessing ways to improve on that. We also worked on starts as this has been a bit of a weakness for the team this season. It's not easy as it's such a sophisticated procedure and there are some highly complex parts involved like the clutch, for example. But we definitely learned some interesting things.

"Other than that it was the usual setup and engine management work that you'd expect at a test. Our aim is to keep increasing any advantage we can find over our rivals and the team is doing a great job of that. Of course, Monaco is up next and that's a very different, special race. But our car is strong in all areas and I see no reason why we won't be just as competitive there."

It was an altogether better day for Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen more than four times as many laps as he completed yesterday. The Maranello outfit focussed on constant speed runs for aero measurement work and set-up testing, the Finn making up for some of the time lost yesterday.

Today's running was trouble-free and most of the running was done on the medium tyres, ending on the softer one.