Ricciardo tops day one of rookie test

The Red Bull protege, who finished second in Formula Renault 3.5 this year, consistently led the times throughout the day, working his way down to a lap of 1m39.616s. This was only a quarter of a second off Sebastian Vettel's pole position time for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, albeit a lap set the previous Saturday when the track was a little less grippy than it was today.

Few teams opted to unleash their young charges for flat-out runs, with McLaren's Oliver Turvey setting the second-fastest time, one second off Ricciardo with a last-lap effort, and gathered plenty of useful data for the team. Gary Paffett is due to take over driving duties tomorrow.

Formula 3 Euro Series race-winner Antonio Felix da Costa impressed in the closing stages, improving to third-fastest with 10 minutes of the day remaining. It was the Portuguese driver's first taste of Formula 1 and his late improvement moved him ahead of Sauber reserve driver Esteban Gutierrez. Force India and Sauber will run Yelmer Buurman and Sergio Perez tomorrow.

Formula 2 champion Dean Stoneman improved to fifth place late on. Driving for Williams, he spent the morning concentrating on aerodynamic work and was able to spend more time improving his own driving in the afternoon, setting his best time with a few minutes to go to move ahead of Renault's Mikhail Aleshin.

British F3 champion Jean-Eric Vergne also made his F1 bow, lapping three tenths off Aleshin and ahead of Force India reserve Paul di Resta, who ran first thing in the morning to create a baseline for da Costa to work from. However, he did not do a comparable run.

Sam Bird completed the first of two days of running for Mercedes, completing 61 laps. He is likely to have the chance to set some more eye-catching times tomorrow after focusing on aerodynamic work today.

Virgin's Jerome d'Ambrosio was best of the new team drivers, pipping impressive HRT debutant Pastor Maldonado in the closing stages. Both ended the day ahead of Ferrari's Jules Bianchi, who spent the day focusing on development work, Lotus driver Rodolfo Gonzalez and Virgin's Rio Haryanto.

Pos  Driver                  Car          Time
 1.  Daniel Ricciardo        Red Bull     1m39.616s
 2.  Oliver Turvey           McLaren      1m40.725s
 3.  Antonio Felix da Costa  Force India  1m41.381s
 4.  Esteban Gutierrez       Sauber       1m41.432s
 5.  Dean Stoneman           Williams     1m41.522s
 6.  Mikhail Aleshin         Renault      1m42.073s
 7.  Jean-Eric Vergne        Toro Rosso   1m42.489s
 8.  Paul di Resta           Force India  1m42.736s
 9.  Sam Bird                Mercedes     1m42.985s
10.  Jerome D'Ambrosio       Virgin       1m43.518s
11.  Pastor Maldonado        HRT          1m43.750s
12.  Jules Bianchi           Ferrari      1m43.894s
13.  Rodolfo Gonzalez        Lotus        1m44.924s
14.  Rio Haryanto            Virgin       1m49.439s

All timing unofficial