Lotus driver Romain Grosjean’s preparations for the Spanish Grand Prix were hampered by a cracked exhaust in practice at Barcelona.

In the changeable conditions of the morning session, he was fourth fastest.

But the exhaust issue stopp-ed him from setting a representative lap on the quicker medium tyres in the afternoon.

That session saw teammate Kimi Raikkonen finish fourth fastest, with the Red Bulls of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber split by Fernando Alonso in his Ferrari.

Grosjean said: “Today was OK. It may not look great on the timesheets, but we didn’t finish our lap on the medium tyres as I had to come back in.

“The circuit isn’t an easy one to understand in terms of tyre performance as there is a lot of degradation, and of course this morning the weather conditions made things a bit difficult.”

Raikkonen added: “We finished the day not too far off the fastest time, so we can say that the day wasn’t a disaster, but for sure there are some things we have to improve with the car which is normal after the first day’s running.”

Valtteri Bottas was 14th in his Grove-based Williams, with teammate and last year’s winner, Pastor Maldonado, two places further back. Giedo van der Garde and Charles Pic, driving for Leafield team Caterham, were 19th and 21st respectively.

Max Chilton made way for reserve Rodolfo Gonzalez in first practice in the Banbury-based Marussia, before clocking 26 laps in the second session to finish four seconds adrift of Vettel at the bottom of the timesheet.

Teammate Jules Bianchi was 20th.