Hamilton sets the pace at Barcelona

The Briton, whose team moved to the bottom of the pitlane, ended the day a comfortable six tenths of a second ahead of former teammate Fernando Alonso, who began to show some of the potential of the new Renault R28 - despite stopping out on track near the end of the day to bring out a red flag.

Robert Kubica proved that BMW Sauber had got a handle on the balance issues that had affected their early tests as he set the third quickest time, with teammate Nick Heidfeld just two places further back.

Fourth fastest, and causing something of a surprise, was Giancarlo Fisichella, who was continuing to develop the interim Force India car.

McLaren test driver Gary Paffett had a fairly incident-filled day of action en route to the sixth fastest time. He stopped out on track at 10:42am, then had spins at 12:46pm and 2:59pm to bring out three red flags over the course of the day.

Seventh quickest Nelson Piquet also caused multiple stoppages as he put mileage on the new R28. He stopped out on track at 4pm and then at 5pm with mechanical problems.

Sebastian Vettel was eighth quickest, while Nico Rosberg managed to set the ninth fastest time despite being forced to end his day's running early while his Williams team got to the bottom of a wing mounting failure that had caused Kazuki Nakajima to crash at the first corner in the morning. Both drivers are expected to be back out tomorrow.

Red Bull Racing duo Mark Webber and David Coulthard made the most of their new engine cover fin to set the 10th and 11th best times in their RB4s - with the drivers suffering a mechanical failure each to bring out a red flag.

Honda Racing's testing of the new RA108 failed to deliver the hoped for step forward in pace, as Rubens Barrichello and Alexander Wurz ended up slowest overall.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time      Laps
 1.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:22.263   82
 2.  Alonso        Renault              (B)  1:22.889   61
 3.  Kubica        BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:22.983   65
 4.  Fisichella    Force India-Ferrari  (B)  1:23.015   98
 5.  Heidfeld      BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:23.270   52
 6.  Paffett       McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:23.349   45
 7.  Piquet        Renault              (B)  1:23.367   44
 8.  Vettel        Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:23.387   89
 9.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:23.453   12
10.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:23.491   60
11.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:23.547   52
12.  Bourdais      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:23.836   54
13.  Nakajima      Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:23.955   35
14.  Barrichello   Honda                (B)  1:24.125   53
15.  Wurz          Honda                (B)  1:26.975   26

All Timing Unofficial