Virgin: Reliability problems are solved

Timo Glock had only done 26 laps in the car before today, due to last week's front wing mounting issue and the hydraulics glitch which limited the German to just 10 laps yesterday.

But with the car running well today, Glock managed 72 laps and set the eighth fastest time, albeit in changeable conditions he was quicker than Vitantonio Liuzzi, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastien Buemi and Heikki Kovalainen.

When asked about the mileage clocked up today, Wirth told AUTOSPORT: "We needed it. Yesterday was a real challenge, the problems we had were tricky, not ones we had experienced before and it just required a lot of thinking.

"We eventually found the problem, but too late to get going. There was a lot of work last night to fix that problem and get everything ready for today - try and regroup and have a good day today.

"Timo had a very frustrating week last week, so it was nice to finally get him in. He seems to enjoy driving the car; he's got a big smile on his face today. The whole team, everybody put in a continuous effort and it's nice to finally see that rewarded. I just wish the poor guy could get some dry laps."

Although hoping for some dry running, Wirth is not concerned that the amount of wet testing will leave Virgin unprepared for the opening race in Bahrain.

"We are finding and fixing problems, we're not stopping because of the weather," he said. "We had another issue today and pretty much every issue we've had has fallen into the category of 'happy issues', which are problems that are not fundamental, but are new problems that we did not understand when we got into this project. It's just about fault-fixing, and we're all in the same boat."