Kubica's Renault fastest

The Pole was back on track for a second day at the wheel of the new Lotus-backed car and continued to run through a programme focused on downforce, set-up and a series of system checks.

Kubica’s day started poorly due to a series of electrical gremlins on the car but a more productive afternoon saw him complete 95 laps and post the fastest lap of the week late in the day.

Germany's Adrian Sutil was second fastest in last year's Force India, albeit with the new Pirelli tyres, in 1:13.201 while McLaren's Jenson Button - who will unveil his new car in Berlin on Friday - was third quickest .

“I think we can split the day into two halves because we had some problems in the morning and we only managed to do our first real run about 1:30pm,” Kubica said. “But, after we solved the issues with the car, we managed to do a bit of set-up evaluation and some tyre work.

“Because of the time we lost this morning we didn’t complete the laps we targeted, but it’s better to get any reliability issues with the car during testing, rather than when we get to the first race in Bahrain.”

Technical director James Allison was also happy with the test and said the team was keen to continue the progress made when testing resumes at Jerez next week.

“After months of effort from the whole team, it was great to be on the track for the first time with the R31 this week,” he said. “Our first three days of testing have not been without incident, but we have managed a good amount of running, proving out the reliability and functionality of all the key systems on the car notwithstanding its rather unusual layout.

“The first test has shown that management of the tyres this season will be absolutely critical, so it was good to have made some progress in this regard. We move on to the second pre-season test next week looking to make further progress with set-up and tyre management prior to getting the first race package together in the later tests.”