Viso underlines pace without problems.

Ernesto Viso continued to mark himself out as one of the fastest men in this year's GP2 Series with second best time of the day during testing in Barcelona, as the run of niggling mechanical gremlins that have interrupted previous development sessions were reduced to a minimum.

The Venezuelan was buoyed late in the day by the completion of a first full race distance, but his speed work in the morning was hampered by a faulty steering wheel that the BCN team later ascribed to a software glitch. A similar malady also hindered team-mate Hiroki Yoshimoto but, generally, the day was better than of late for the local team.

Viso's pace during the morning left him second overall to pre-season favourite Heikki Kovalainen, with another consistently quick opponent, Nelson Piquet Jr completing the top three, but was achieved in just 14 flying laps as the team sought to overcome the steering wheel problem.

"We were fastest in the morning, and remained second overall, but I reckon we could have gone quicker if we had not spent a lot of time in the pits," claimed Viso, who was getting his first taste of the Circuit de Catalunya in the GP2 car, "In the afternoon, we concentrated on a race simulation, which ran without problems, but we have seen that it is possible to go quicker later in the day, so we have noted that for Thursday's session.

"I'm pretty happy with my results and hope that, tomorrow, we can be on top again. The tyres we were using today were harder than the tyres we had at Paul Ricard, but they have behaved pretty well. These tyres have less grip than the others, but start off really fast. They then decrease in performance quite quickly but, at the end, they work really well again."

Viso, who will carry Crash.net