Vitaly Petrov insists he is getting a better understanding of the new Pirelli tyres after a solid performance on the third day of F1 testing 💙in Barcelona.

Overnight rain gave Petrov his first chance to sample Pirelli's intermediate tyre during the morning after a series of long runs on track b꧃efore he worked on set-up during the afternoon.

Having lost time earlier in the week to a KERS-rel♒ated issue, the Russian was able to complete mo🍰re than 90 laps with his quick time during a short run towards the end of the day.

"We used the intermediates to begin with and it was on💛e of our first opportunities to do a lot of laps with them," he said. ജ"The only issue we had was warming them up because it was very cold early on. The plan was to do a race distance in the morning and we managed quite a lot of long runs while the track was wet. Then, we put the slicks on just before lunch and started improving the set-up.

"We learned a lot of new things and I'm starting to understand the tyres more and how to get the most from th🉐is car."

Petrov's solid day on track came after he told Renault they could rely on him to perform this season in the absence of the injured Robert Kubica [See separate story ].

To view times from the third day of running in Barcelona, .