“It was a good day," Ricciardo said after the two days at the Spanish circuit.

"We did pretty much every run on our schedule and run plans are always pretty optimistic so I think we’ll take that today.

"We put in over 100 laps and we ran pretty faultlessly. It was good for me to get a lot more laps. We also tried a few compounds, which maybe is not so relevant at this time of year but it was good to try them anyways.

"So, for me, a positive two days; you can’t ask for too much more. I’m looking forward to next week’s test now – I’ll have just two more days and then it’s Melbourne. I’m just excited to roll it over now and to get to Australia.”

Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin added: “We had a small technical concern this afternoon and just as a precautionary measure we decided to stop running a little bit early.

"We had a very productive day otherwise, with Daniel getting through more than 100 laps.

"In the morning we focused on short runs and doing some tyre work. You have to remember that because of the short amount of time behind the wheel each driver gets, Daniel is now effectively halfway to Melbourne, so he needs to get up to speed pretty quickly.

"Also, while it probably isn’t the ideal venue or time of year to be looking at some of those compounds it’s really the only chance we’ll get for the foreseeable future, so it’s good to get as much data as we can. 

"The afternoon saw us move back to long runs and just as yesterday we got through a lot of work. So far, so good and tomorrow we’ll hopefully get through more.”

The Red Bull RB12 machine features a striking new paint scheme that breaks the tradition of the previous 10 years, featuring new colours and logo applications.