“It's nice to be back testing again after a break,” summarised the Régie's chief test engineer Christian Silk, “and obviously with new rules coming into force next year it's going to be an interesting winter test period. We had a good first day of the programme with no major problems, and we learnt what we needed to as we worked on 2009-type set-ups with slick tyres.

“Giedo had had a good first day with us; he has limited experience of Formula 1 and so it was a learning process, but it was a positive session and he worked well with the engineers. We'll debrief with him tonight and give him another run out tomorrow morning.”

Behind Piquet, Williams test driver Nico Hülkenberg wound up eleventh, the 2008 F3 Euroseries king encountering no problems as he covered 116 laps in the Grove-based concern's interim FW30 ahead of his hand-over to namesake Nico Rosberg.

Force India duo Vitantonio Liuzzi and Adrian Sutil, meanwhile, proved evenly-matched both in terms of laps covered and times on the stopwatch in twelfth and 13th spots respectively, with Gené, Senna, van der Garde and di Grassi completing the order at the close of day one.

To see the testing times in full, click here