Bruno Senna says 2012 Williams very easy on tyres

Senna completed almost a full race distance during the afternoon session, highlighted by a 15-lap stint on the soft tyre, and a 19-lap stint on Pirelli's medium compound. According to Senna, it was pay-off in an area the team has been especially focused on.

"We've been working very hard to find a way for the car to take care of the tyres," he said. "The morning was good, we managed to learn a lot about each tyre compound; some of them went well, some of them didn't go so well in terms of getting the maximum out of the tyres.

"The afternoon was very productive with the race sim. It was tough, the track conditions were changing during the afternoon. But we managed to put more laps into the tyre than we were expecting, in general.

"I think it was an informative race stint, which unfortunately got cut short by the rain. I wanted to see how the harder tyres were going to behave at the end of the stint, but they were behaving very well and the lap times weren't too bad, so I think we're looking OK."

Not long after the rain set in, Senna was halted by an electrical problem. However, he is confident there will be no reliability issues in Melbourne.

"We had a small issue with the electronics again. The car has been running its fair share of kilometres, and sometimes one or two systems decide they've had enough. It was a small issue, nothing to worry about."