Webber sets rapid pace at Barcelona

With Red Bull Racing having run alone at the track on Wednesday for filming purposes, Webber spent Thursday morning concentrating on qualifying simulations.

Never completing more than three flying laps at a time, Webber steadily improved over the course of the morning to set his best lap of 1m21.487s shortly before 12.30pm.

To put his performance into perspective, he set eight laps quicker than anyone else managed - and his best time was a whopping 1.027 seconds faster than Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes GP.

Rosberg, whose team is expected to fit aerodynamic updates to its car for the second day of the test on Friday, concentrated on long run efforts but set his best effort during a short blast before the lunch break.

Nico Hulkenberg had been Webber's nearest rival for much of the morning, but eventually ended up third quickest - just 0.170 seconds behind Rosberg. The Williams driver spent some of the morning working on longer runs before trying some qualifying simulations for his best lap of 1m22.684s.

Pedro de la Rosa continued BMW Sauber's steady progress in testing to set the fourth best time of the morning, ahead of a slightly frustrated Fernando Alonso in the Ferrari.

Alonso stopped on track shortly before 10.25am with a suspected mechanical problem, and did not re-emerge until shortly before the lunch break. He was only able to complete 22 laps during the morning session.

Behind him, Jenson Button was sixth fastest for McLaren, ahead of Jaime Alguersuari in the Toro Rosso, Vitantonio Liuzzi in the Force India and Vitaly Petrov in the Renault.

There was more frustration for Virgin Racing, which saw Lucas di Grassi hit the barriers at Turn 9 after spinning off the track shortly before the lunch break.

The rear of the VR-01 took the brunt of the impact, and it is not clear if the team will be able to repair the damage for the Brazilian to get back out on track before the end of the day.

The other red flag was caused in the first half hour of the morning session when Fairuz Fauzy in the Lotus stopped on track with a hydraulic problem.

Pos  Driver             Team         Time       Gap       Laps
 1.  Mark Webber        Red Bull     1m21.487s            57
 2.  Nico Rosberg       Mercedes     1m22.514s  + 1.027s  58
 3.  Nico Hulkenberg    Williams     1m22.684s  + 1.197s  59
 4.  Pedro de la Rosa   Sauber       1m23.321s  + 1.834s  53
 5.  Fernando Alonso    Ferrari      1m24.580s  + 3.093s  22
 6.  Jenson Button      McLaren      1m24.582s  + 3.095s  44
 7.  Jaime Alguersuari  Toro Rosso   1m24.86s   + 3.382s  72
 8.  Tonio Liuzzi       Force India  1m25.303s  + 3.816s  33
 9.  Vitaly Petrov      Renault      1m26.208s  + 4.721s  54
10.  Lucas di Grassi    Virgin       1m27.057s  + 5.570s  31
11.  Fairuz Fauzy       Lotus        1m29.795s  + 8.308s  37