Palmer puts Lotus on top at Barcelona

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

Lotus reserve driver Jolyon Palmer has put Lotus on top of the timesheet as Barcelona testing came to a close on Wednesday. The GP2 champion topped Mercedes' Pascal Wehrlein in the final 15 minutes thanks to a run on the super soft tyres.

While Palmer claimed a "good day at the office", Wehrlein has also been extremely busy for Mercedes, continuing where Nico Rosberg left off the day before. The German completed long runs before lunch and continued with setup work for the Monaco Grand Prix in the afternoon, in addition to evaluating a number of new parts and conducting practice starts.

Pierre Gasly was third fastest in the RB11, having driven for Toro Rosso the day before. He came close to demoting Wehrlein to third at the end of the day, but stranded at 2 tenths.

Jenson Button took over driving duties for McLaren today, and successfully ran through all the items on today’s run-plan. These included running measuring rakes on the car in the morning to capture aerodynamic data, and a lengthy series of mechanical and aerodynamic balance changes, with modifications made to the front wing and suspension in order to provide our engineers with detailed data about MP4-30. At the end of the day, Button reportedly noted that the set-up work undertaken had gone a long way to curing the rear-end handling imbalance that afflicted him in Sunday’s race.

Fifth fastest was Alex Lynn, debuting for Williams. Having done only simulator work for Williams so far, the Brit was excited after his first outing.

"I didn’t really sleep that well last night as I was so excited about today", Lynn commented. "It has been an amazing day and great to get behind the wheel of the FW37. We managed to get through a really important schedule and I completed a number of runs in the car. The team were happy with how we got on and with my performance, so all-in-all it has been a really positive day."

Mercedes backed Esteban Ocon drove the Force India today, also debuting in a Formula One car. Ocon only had his seat fitting on Tuesday evening and was briefed in the last minute on some of the team's procedures and the car's steering wheel.

At Ferrari, Esteban Gutierrez made his official debut for the team, completing 66 laps before lunchtime and eventually ended the day with 119 laps on his tally.

Carlos Sainz was 8th fastest for Toro Rosso, completing 126 laps as the Italian team concentrated on long runs, rather than outright performance.

All were better off than Raffaele Marciello however, as the Ferrari backed youngster crashed his Sauber on lap 8 at turn 3. He sat out most of the morning session as a result but managed to return to the track to bring his total to 75.