Coulthard fastest at rain-hit Barcelona

With teammate Mark Webber having shown similar swift speed on Wednesday, Coulthard's morning effort indicated that Red Bull Racing are likely to step up in form from what they have shown so far this year when the season resumes at the Spanish track next week.

Even though Coulthard's run was a qualifying simulation, rival teams estimate that a fuel corrected time would put the team close to BMW Sauber's race pace and lift them ahead of the tight midfield pack that they have been locked in so far this campaign.

Coulthard's place at the top of the timesheets, with a time that was a new record for the reconfigured Barcelona track, was sealed when the rain that has dogged this week's test returned just after lunchtime.

That meant Coulthard ended the day two tenths of a second ahead of McLaren's Pedro de la Rosa, whose best lap also came on a single lap run.

Despite stopping on track at 11:30am with a software problem, the Spaniard continued the team's evaluation of their new front wing, which they are considering introducing for the Spanish Grand Prix alongside other developments.

Felipe Massa was unable to seal Ferrari's complete domination of the test with the third fastest time, and his morning was blighted by an hydraulic pump failure at 9:30am.

Renault continued working on developments and overcoming the problems that have marred their start to the season as Giancarlo Fisichella set the fifth quickest time. The Italian had a spin in the wet in the afternoon, causing the third red flag of the day.

Seventh quickest Christian Klien caused a few raised eyebrows in the morning when he tried out extra nose wings, nicknamed 'Dumbo Wings', on his Honda Racing RA107.

The extra devices did not prove a success, however, with team sources suggesting that the idea was scrapped when it became clear very quickly it did not provide any benefit to the problems the team are suffering.

The bad weather, and the fact that teams are limited on testing mileage over the course of the year, meant everybody packed up one hour early.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                     Time     Laps
 1.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault    (B)  1:21.066   59
 2.  de la Rosa    McLaren-Mercedes    (B)  1:21.267   58
 3.  Massa         Ferrari             (B)  1:21.483   38
 4.  Fisichella    Renault             (B)  1:21.876   63
 5.  Kubica        BMW-Sauber          (B)  1:22.098   55
 6.  R.Schumacher  Toyota              (B)  1:22.359   49
 7.  Klien         Honda               (B)  1:22.807   80 

All Timing Unofficial