Barrichello eyes performance work

The Brazilian completed 120 laps yesterday, the majority of them in wet conditions, as Williams continued to work through the development programme on the Cosworth powerplant, which was last used in Formula 1 in 2006.

Having completed that part of the programme, Barrichello is now keen to start working on the outright pace of the car.

"In the dry we need to experiment on set-ups because we've been on reliability all the time," said Barrichello. "Now we need to look for performance.

"On Friday we had a programme that we had to finish, which was running the engine down. We put a lot of mileage on the engine and it felt good. We were able to complete the programme on 120 laps."

Despite not yet having focused on performance, Barrichello was surprised at the speed of the car during the brief dry spell early in the day - even though he was running on a heavy fuel load.

"We knew that it was going to get wet, but we couldn't afford to lower the fuel for the dry," said Barrichello. "But to be honest I was quite happy with my times in the morning when it was dry and on full tanks."

The only setback Barrichello suffered during the day was when he became beached on a kerb after a spin and caused a red flag.

"There was a lot more rain and the tyres were bald already, so I spun out," he admitted. "We had a few clutch issues today and when I went to do the half-spin I got caught on that kerb."