Most of the field spent the afternoon focusing on race simulations, meaning that Raikkonen's 1m22.030s lap, set inside the final 20 minutes of the morning, was unlikely to come under fire.

The Lotus driver's race simulation was among the most impressive of the day as he completed a 65-lap run on four sets of Pirelli tyres; three soft, one hard. During these stints he suffered performance drop-off of no more than 1.8s on any given set of tyres.

While his drop-off figures were the best of the race simulations, his overall pace was still shy of Lewis Hamilton's McLaren, which seemed to have a 0.2s advantage on any given lap of a stint.

With nobody improving, Fernando Alonso retained second spot in the times - 0.220s down on Raikkonen.

The Ferrari driver's race run was affected by a couple of red flags caused by Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber - which suffered an engine problem and stopped between Turns 4 and 5 – and Vitaly Petrov's Caterham, which took a trip through the gravel at Turn 4 with half an hour to go.

Bruno Senna remained third overall, despite the Brazilian being replaced by his team-mate Pastor Maldonado for the afternoon. Maldonado completed 48 laps – which included two stints on supersofts – putting him ninth.

Nico Hulkenberg's Force India and Kobayashi were next up, ahead of Hamilton, Petrov and Michael Schumacher's Mercedes, which focused on a succession of 10-lap runs on soft tyres.

Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso and the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel brought up the tail of the field. Vettel completed just six laps right at the end of the day; his RB8 having to be cured of gearbox problems that had also restricted his morning running.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver         Team            Time                Laps
 1.  Raikkonen      Lotus           1m22.030s           121
 2.  Alonso         Ferrari         1m22.250s  +0.220   115
 3.  Senna          Williams        1m22.296s  +0.266   53
 4.  Hulkenberg     Force India     1m22.312s  +0.282   101
 5.  Kobayashi      Sauber          1m22.386s  +0.356   72
 6.  Hamilton       McLaren         1m22.430s  +0.400   115
 7.  Petrov         Caterham        1m22.795s  +0.765   101
 8.  Schumacher     Mercedes        1m22.939s  +0.909   100
 9.  Maldonado      Williams        1m23.347s  +1.317   48
10.  Ricciardo      Toro Rosso      1m23.393s  +1.363   100
11.  Vettel         Red Bull        1m23.608s  +1.578   23

Autosport.com