Next up was Nelson Piquet, who will run on all three-days for Renault – the regie have opted not to run on Friday. The Brazilian concentrated on acclimatising to the R27 fitted with the 2008-spec standard ECU and having already driven the car in this configuration earlier in the year, adapted pretty quickly.

"It was good to get back to driving today, particularly as I will be in the car for all three days this week," he stated. "I was comfortable in the car, and it felt good to be running without driver aids. We found a good set-up for the car today, and that will help us make more progress tomorrow."

"Our aim for the day was to get Nelson comfortable with the car, and it went well," added Renault's chief test engineer, Christian Silk. "He did a good job on the set-up programme in order to find a baseline set-up for the rest of the week. We could have run more laps, but it was still an encouraging day, and we will be focusing on doing plenty of miles to successfully complete our programme over the next two days."

Of the rest, Sebastien Bourdais was sixth for Toro Rosso, just two-three tenths off Piquet. He managed 101 laps in total, the second highest of the day, while working on a front flap comparison and also carrying out an evaluation of front suspension solutions.

Bourdais' team-mate, Sebastian Vettel didn't have such a good day though and while he was only four tenths slower and ended proceedings in eleventh, he managed just 46 laps due to a technical problem.

Red Bull Racing's Mark Webber and Mike Conway were the other two runners to make it into the top ten, eighth and tenth fastest respectively, with Gene sandwiched in between in ninth. This was Mark's first run in the RB3 since Interlagos and he will be joined on Wednesday by David Coulthard, when the team runs two cars.

After that James Rossiter was 12th, two tenths behind Vettel, with Giancarlo Fisichella, Nico Hulkenberg and Kazuki Nakajima 13th, 14th and 15th respectively.

Hulkenberg, who was getting his first outing in an F1 car and who is chasing a test role with Williams, was fractionally up Nakajima.

"We opened our four day test at Jerez today with Kazuki Nakajima and Nico Huelkenberg," stated Williams test team manager, Dickie Stanford. "Kazuki was working through the final part of our 2007 test programme and Nico joined us for his first run in a Formula One car. Nico provided solid feedback for his debut outing and will continue in the car tomorrow alongside Nico Rosberg. After tomorrow, Kazuki and Nico Rosberg will be on testing duties for the remaining two days."

Toyota's Timo Glock and Kamui Kobayashi ended the day near the bottom of the times, sandwiching Franck Montagny, who was running for Force India F1. Both Timo and Kamui were getting their first taste of the TF107 and neither had any problems.