Rosberg heads penultimate test day

The German's best lap of 1m20.686s from the morning, set before rain disrupted the action for a couple of hours, was enough to keep him at the top of the timesheets ahead of Sebastien Buemi's Toro Rosso.

Both drivers switched from short runs to long runs in the afternoon, and both suffered technical problems that forced them to stop on track. Rosberg stopped in the closing stages of a race simulation, while Buemi ran out of fuel a couple of laps into a run that came after his own race simulation had been completed.

The red flag for the Toro Rosso left the teams with less than 20 minutes to work with at the end of the day, and several of them opted to try some short runs, leading to plenty of changes to the leaderboard in the closing stages.

World champion Jenson Button jumped up to third late on, having spent most of his day working on race simulation in the McLaren.

Rubens Barrichello was another to focus on long runs in the afternoon, but he then improved to dip into the 1m21s at the end of the day, before the Williams brought an end to the day's action when it stopped just before Turn 7.

Felipe Massa also worked on long runs for most of the day, and the fifth-placed Ferrari driver's best time came in his final stint of a race simulation, shortly after he stopped for fresh tyres.

Some qualifying runs for Vitaly Petrov moved Renault closer to the pace than it has been so far this test in sixth, while Adrian Sutil was seventh for Force India.

Sebastian Vettel finished the day in eighth place having only notched up 51 laps by the end of proceedings. The Red Bull driver hardly ran at all in the morning, but did three runs of nine or 10 laps in the afternoon, with his final outing yielding his best time.

Jarno Trulli completed over 100 laps for Lotus on his way to ninth quickest, while Kamui Kobayashi's focus on long runs meant that the Sauber driver did not set any spectacular times and was classified 10th.

Virgin ended a difficult day with the slowest time, but after hardly setting a lap time all day Timo Glock at least managed to get close to the pace with a late run.

Pos  Driver              Team         Time       Gap       Laps
 1.  Nico Rosberg        Mercedes     1m20.686s            128
 2.  Sebastien Buemi     Toro Rosso   1m21.413s  + 0.727s  106
 3.  Jenson Button       McLaren      1m21.450s  + 0.764s  105
 4.  Rubens Barrichello  Williams     1m21.975s  + 1.289s  101
 5.  Felipe Massa        Ferrari      1m22.344s  + 1.658s  115
 6.  Vitaly Petrov       Renault      1m22.523s  + 1.837s  68
 7.  Adrian Sutil        Force India  1m22.606s  + 1.920s  61
 8.  Sebastian Vettel    Red Bull     1m23.123s  + 2.437s  51
 9.  Jarno Trulli        Lotus        1m25.059s  + 4.373s  102
10.  Kamui Kobayashi     Sauber       1m26.216s  + 5.530s  105
11.  Timo Glock          Virgin       1m26.305s  + 5.619s  31

All timing unofficial