Abu Dhabi Young Driver Test: Lotus impressed with Valsecchi

The Italian took advantage of Lotus giving him a series of "performance runs" to set the fastest time of the day in the E20.

And Lotus race engineer Simon Rennie said the 25-year-old got to grips with the car very quickly.

"The final day's running with Davide has been a good end to our young driver test this year," said Rennie.

"Before lunch we completed performance runs as he became accustomed to the set up and quickly explored the limits of the car.

"Obviously the step from GP2 to Formula 1 is not enormous, but we were impressed with how quickly he was up to speed by this morning."

Valsecchi, who has previous F1 experience with back of the grid teams HRT and Lotus (now Caterham), said that he had taken a careful approach to the test to ensure he didn't waste the opportunity by making errors.

"It's been a really good experience for me," he said. "I was very pleased with my sessions and followed everything the team asked of me without making mistakes.

"I took it very easy in the morning so I could get used to the car and soon became more confident, meaning towards the end I was much better."

Rennie added that Lotus had spent the morning focusing on development work with its double DRS, which "provided us with enough data to make an informed decision at a later stage" on the concept.