Van der Garde enjoys track return

The Dutch rookie spent Thursday behind the wheel of the CT01 as the team continued their preparations ahead of the 2012 season.

Whilst the 26-year-old didn't light up the timing screens during his stint, he was happy to just get track time having last driven F1 machinery as long ago as 2008.

Van der Garde said: "That was a good day. I'm happy because I put in a lot of time in the car and that was the first time I've been on track since Monza last year, so I had to spend a bit of time this morning getting back into the groove, but that came pretty quickly and then we got down to work.

"I'm very pleased because by the end of the day I was getting starting to get used to all the new things about F1 - there's a lot to learn but I know what I need to focus on so next time I'm in the car I'll definitely be able to get on the pace more quickly.

"There are a couple of real areas that I know I can work on - the first being the brakes. I'm used to a stiffer pedal on the GP2 car so I had to adapt my style a bit to get used to the F1 car, but that came quite early.

"The other area is getting the most out of the new tyres. The quickest lap time is pretty much straight out of the box and that means being on it as soon as you leave the pits."

The Dutchman also got to grips with F1's overtaking aids for the first time, and feels that next time he's in the car will be able to get the full benefit from them over a lap.

"We used both DRS and KERS today and I felt pretty comfortable with both," he added.

"DRS started to come naturally by the end of the day and with KERS there's more to come. Jarno [Trulli] will be working on maximising that tomorrow so I think the team will have more for me to work through on that system next time I'm in the car.

"Basically I enjoyed myself today. The team has been great with me - the engineers and the mechanics have all been working really hard to help me acclimatise, so thanks to them for today and now I'm looking forward to my next run."

Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne was pleased with the progress the team have made during the first three days in southern Spain.

He said: "Another useful day of testing, this time with Giedo in the car for his first runs with us.

"The plan today was to acclimatise Giedo in the car this morning and then start running through more systems tests and KERS evaluation and he did a very solid job for us, making sure we could get through the whole program.

"Reliability was again good for us today and tomorrow we will give Jarno his first taste of KERS, run through tyre evaluations and start exploring more of the car's performance potential."