Vettel fastest as testing resumes

Conditions were difficult throughout the day, with sunshine only occasionally breaking through between heavy showers and persistent dampness.

Vettel made the most of a brighter spell in early afternoon to set a best time of 1m22.593s, which stood as the day's fastest.

Lewis Hamilton made a last minute improvement as the track dried again to take second, 0.424 seconds down on Vettel. The McLaren driver demoted Ferrari's Felipe Massa to third. Both drivers had earlier lost a little time by stopping on track and contributing to the day's tally of five red flags.

Sebastien Buemi kept Toro Rosso near the top of the times with fourth place, ahead of Sauber's Pedro de la Rosa and Mercedes' Michael Schumacher. The latter was the most active driver of the day, completing 111 laps.

"The weather was really changing all the time today which made it difficult to follow our planned programme and to have a clear picture of everyone's performance," Schumacher said.

"From the laps that we achieved, we have again confirmed the reliability of the car, and from the impressions and data gathered, we can say that the pace and performance looks very good. We have a strong basis to keep up the development this week here in Jerez and next week at the final test in Barcelona."

De la Rosa also admitted the weather did not help, but the Spaniard was still satisfied with his work.

"The conditions were obviously not ideal today, but overall things went well for us, and we were able to complete all the work we had on the programme for today," he said.

"However, we hope to get in some more laps in dry conditions because we still have a lot of work to do. The weather forecast is not very good for tomorrow, so we have to make the most of every dry window we get."

Force India used both reserve driver Paul di Resta and race driver Adrian Sutil. Di Resta caused an early red flag with a half-spin and eventually ended up just behind Sutil - who took over for the afternoon - on the timesheets.

Rubens Barrichello caused both of the other two red flags when his Williams came to a halt. He was 10th behind Renault's Vitaly Petrov, but did complete 109 laps when on-track.

One of the most significant aspects of today's session was the new Lotus team's first test alongside its rivals. Reserve driver Fairuz Fauzy covered 76 laps in an encouraging start for the squad.

The Malaysian was 9.2s off Hamilton's pace, but 0.6s in front of Virgin's Timo Glock, as the other new team present completed only 10 laps.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                       Time     Laps
 1.  Vettel        Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:22.593   99
 2.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:23.017   72
 3.  Massa         Ferrari              (B)  1:23.204   72
 4.  Buemi         Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  1:23.322   79
 5.  de la Rosa    BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:23.367   76
 6.  M.Schumacher  Mercedes GP          (B)  1:23.803  111
 7.  Sutil         Force India-Mercedes (B)  1:24.272   28
 8.  di Resta      Force India-Mercedes (B)  1:25.088   74
 9.  Petrov        Renault              (B)  1:26.237   55
10.  Barrichello   Williams-Cosworth    (B)  1:27.320  109
11.  Fauzy         Lotus-Cosworth       (B)  1:31.848   76
12.  Glock         Virgin-Cosworth      (B)  1:32.417   10

All Timing Unofficial