Sauber tests at Paul Ricard

The team's young Brazilian driver was charged with testing duties on the opening day and he duly completed 81 laps of the former home of the French GP, a track he had not driven on before.

"It's been enjoyable to come here to learn another new track, and I really like the long back straight," he said. "The weather has been great and today I didn't have to worry about traffic since I was the only car out there! We did a lot of good work today and the car worked perfectly."

The high-speed circuit has practically nothing in common with Monaco, the next track on the F1 calendar. However, in keeping with the team's philosophy of preparing itself one race in advance, it does share similar characteristics with Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, which plays host to the Canadian GP on June 9.

Massa's team-mate Nick Heidfeld is now fully recovered from his high-speed Austrian GP shunt and will test today and Friday. Toyota also begins its test at Paul Ricard today.

Ferrari test driver Luciano Burti is in action at Jerez this week, where he is driving one of last year's F2001 chassis. Yesterday he covered 84 laps of the track evaluating various types of Bridgestone tyre. His best lap was 1m22.991s.

The team's other tester Luca Badoer was also in action. The Italian drove an F2002 car at Fiorano. He did 104 laps (32 on the short track) setting a best time of 58.936s.