Webber quickest at rain-hit Barcelona

After a downpour in the morning, the sun dried up the track enough to allow Webber to set a best time of 1:21.953 before the rain hit the track again in the afternoon.

As a consequence, the Red Bull driver finished over 1.5 seconds ahead of McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen, who set his time near the end of the day, when the track was starting to dry up again.

All drivers used intermediate tyres during the test.

Kimi Raikkonen, taking over from Michael Schumacher at the wheel of the updated Ferrari F2008, did not manage to complete significant running on his only day of work in Spain, covering just 34 laps on his way to the third fastest time.

Robert Kubica was fourth quickest for BMW Sauber, with Jenson Button rounding up the top five in the Honda after 41 laps.

Williams' Kazuki Nakajima caused the only red flag of the day when his Toyota engine let go late in the day at the first corner. Despite that, the Japanese was the busiest man with 61 laps covered, one more than Nelsinho Piquet, who returned to the wheel of the Renault R28.

Jarno Trulli finished at the bottom of the times with his Toyota after completing just 18 laps.

"We knew that rain was forecast for today so we didn't expect to be able to make too much progress," said Trulli. "When we finally did some running we put in a few laps of wet set-up but with the track changing so much it is always hard to draw too many conclusions.

"When we return here next week the conditions will be different again. But we have had some solid days of testing here this year so we can head into the race with confidence."

The Toro Rosso and Force India teams skipped today's test, the former unable to rebuild their car following Sebastien Bourdais' crash yesterday, and the latter deciding not to run in the wet.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time      Laps
 1.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault     (B)  1:21.953   37
 2.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1:23.589   34
 3.  Raikkonen     Ferrari              (B)  1:23.619   34
 4.  Kubica        BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:24.715   32
 5.  Button        Honda                (B)  1:24.873   41
 6.  Nakajima      Williams-Toyota      (B)  1:24.927   62
 7.  Piquet        Renault              (B)  1:26.100   61
 8.  Trulli        Toyota               (B)  1:32.150   18

All Timing Unofficial