Barrichello fastest for Williams

While the circuit remained wet this afternoon at Jerez, conditions improved enough to allow gains to be made from the morning times, even if blustery conditions made life harder for the 11 teams.

Rubens Barrichello made gains in the early afternoon to move to the head of the timesheets in his Williams Cosworth with a best lap of 1:27.145s, six-tenths clear of his nearest challenger. The Grove-based squad them turned its attention to setup worked aimed at the Bahrain Grand Prix ending the day with the highest number of laps, 98.

Vitaly Petrov was another to make gains this afternoon as the new Renault driver moved second fastest ahead of Wednesday pace-setter Sebastian Vettel.

Nico Rosberg took over testing duties today from Michael Schumacher but the Mercedes team were also left frustrated by the track conditions as they worked on ‘race procedures’ while hoping for the weather to improve. He ended the day fourth fastest, a fairly typical position for the newly-acquired team this week.

Ferrari opted to amend its scheduled programme to include pit stop work as ‘the track conditions are not really helpful to do much else’ while Felipe Massa also lost some track time with a mechanical problem early in the day.

The Brazilian tried some slick tyres at 2.30, but slithered off the circuit and returned to the pits ending the day fifth fastest ahead of Pedro de la Rosa who only completed eight laps in the so-far promising Sauber Ferrari.

Force India again ran a split programme with test and reserve driver Paul di Resta running until 2pm before handling over to Tonio Liuzzi for the remainder of the day. The duo ended the day seventh and ninth fastest respectively.

Timo Glock suffered a spin in the morning at the second turn as the new Virgin Cosworth team looked to gain valuable test mileage on their VR-01. Glock made progress this afternoon, moving to eighth and splitting the two Force India drivers. Lewis Hamilton was next up for McLaren ahead of Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi.

Lotus meanwhile were forced to pack up early after Heikki Kovalainen spun off at turn three, damaging the front wing on the new T127 challenger.

With limited spare parts available, the team will fly in a replacement wing overnight to allow the test programme to resume on Friday. Kovalainen completed 30 laps and was the slowest of the 12 runners.

In other news, the beleaguered USF1 team has denied that their official website problems today mean the squad has folded.

Testing continues on Friday with more rain expected.