Formula 1 Testing: Times from Day Three at Barcelona

Pleasant, if not especially warm weather greeted the teams on Thursday for day three of the second preseason test at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Jenson Button, Felipe Massa, Mark Webber, Jean-Eric Vergne, Kamui Kobayashi, Pastor Maldonado, Timo Glock and Paul di Resta all had their first run out on the Barcelona track, while Michael Schumacher returned to the cockpit after a day off.

The fastest time of the day was set—somewhat surprisingly—by Maldonado in the Williams.  His lap of 1:22.391 was almost a whole second faster than No. 2 man Schumacher's best for Mercedes.

#	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Pastor Maldonado	Williams	1:22.391	106
02	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1:23.384	127
03	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber	1:23.582	99
04	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:23.918	114
05	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso	1:24.433	78
06	Mark Webber	Red Bull	1:24.771	97
07	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:24.771	84
08	Paul di Resta	Force India	1:25.646	83
*09	Timo Glock	Marussia	1:26.173	108
10	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham	1:26.448	70

* indicates a 2011 car with 2012 tyres

Maldonado's time was set during a three flying lap run on super-soft tyres and was the fastest of the week so far.  On the soft tyres, he managed 1:22.612—and that's not a terrible lap in a car which isn't fully understood. 

Have Williams only been pretending to lack pace, or is it another case of flattery by fuel loads?

Elsewhere, Felipe Massa found himself doing straight-line aerodynamic tests as Ferrari continue to work out what their car does, while Michael Schumacher put in a 50-lap partial-race simulation.  Mercedes appear to have gained a good understanding of their car already, despite missing the first test at Jerez.

Overall, it looks like only Williams tried to put in some quick laps.  Ferrari, Red Bull and Force India— almost all the teams, in fact—were notably slower than they were on Wednesday, with longer stints the order of the day.

That's seven days of testing gone, and all we really know so far is that doing quick laps is a long way down the list of priorities.  Maybe the FIA should buy dinner for the team which produces the fastest lap of each day to encourage a bit of competition.

I'm sure we'd all love to hear about Mark Webber and Jenson Button duking it out for a lobster thermidor...

Friday is the fourth and final day of this test, and the session begins, as usual, at 9:00am CET.