Barcelona day 1: Badoer quickest

The Italian driver spent the day working on Ferrari's electrical and gearbox programmes. His best time of 1m18.889s was almost a second faster than Jaguar driver Antonio Pizzonia managed.

There were mixed fortunes for the Jaguar drivers. Pizzonia's was the only green car to lap the circuit for much of the day, as Mark Webber's R3B spent most of its time in the garage after it suffered an electrical problem early in the morning.

Olivier Panis set the third fastest time in his first proper test for Toyota. The Frenchman was forced to switch to left-foot braking for the test. Although Panis prefers to break using his right foot, there is not enough room in the footwell of the TF102 chassis to add a third pedal. Nevertheless he enjoyed his outing.

"I have a positive sensation after my first test in this car," said Panis, "especially from the engine and the tyres. The Michelin tyres have the potential to be great. As for the chassis...I'll wait for the next one. At the moment I'm just learning and I need more mileage, but I think that the biggest step that is needed is with the aero."

CART champion Cristiano da Matta spent the day acclimatising himself to Formula 1. The Brazilian used a manual gear downchange throughout the day, as his engineers reckoned it was easier to learn than the automatic system developed by the team. He was a couple of seconds off Panis' pace, but was unconcerned by this.

"I'm not surprised Olivier is that much faster than me," said the Brazilian, "Of course I'm not happy about it, but I need experience and knowledge to close the gap. I was losing most of my time in the slow corners, so I know that's where I need to improve."

Anthony Davidson was the sole driver for BAR, and concentrated on software development running one of this season's cars.

Luca Badoer (Ferrari) 1m18.889s
Antonio Pizzonia (Jaguar) 1m19.797s
Olivier Panis (Toyota) 1m19.854s
Anthony Davidson (BAR) 1m21.733s
Cristiano da Matta (Toyota) 1m21.925s
Mark Webber (Jaguar) no time