Williams's Pastor Maldonado won the 66-lap event from pole position, with Ferrari's Fernando Alonso second and Lotus's Kimi Räikkönen third.

With 15 races remaining in the season, Red Bull maintained its World Constructors' Championship lead over McLaren and Lotus with 109 points.

[12] Lotus' Romain Grosjean and Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi set identical lap times to go quickest on the second day of testing.

And that puts us into the lead of the drivers' and constructors' championship after the flyways, which is certainly not what we were expecting after the first couple of races, so it just shows if you maintain your focus and teamwork, that it can pay dividends.

[15]Alonso had won the Malaysian Grand Prix before finishing no higher than seventh in the next two races, dropping him ten points behind Vettel in the Drivers' Championship.

"[17] After finishing second at the preceding Bahrain Grand Prix, Räikkönen said his objective was to win the race in Spain: "That is the target for me and the team.

[26][27] Pedro de la Rosa's HRT car bottomed out braking for the first corner and removing the right-rear bargeboard,[26] which was later retrieved from turn one.

Button, driving with a chronic understeer, set the day's fastest lap of 1:23.399 seconds on the soft compound tyres with 55 minutes remaining.

Webber, Pérez, Alonso, Toro Rosso driver Jean-Éric Vergne, Button, Räikkönen and Rosberg made up positions four to ten.

[34] Grosjean's Lotus car lost power due to a sudden loss of fuel pressure, causing his engine to stall 17 minutes into the session at turn ten.

[39] Kobayashi, tenth, suffered a hydraulic leak en route to the pit lane at the end of the second session, prompting Sauber to instruct him to stop his car to ensure no further damage was sustained.

[41] Button, 11th, was the fastest driver not to qualify for the final session due to an unbalanced car with understeer in high-speed corners and an unstable rear entering slower-speed turns when McLaren added angle to his front wing.

[1] Ferrari's Felipe Massa, 17th, registered his lowest starting position since the 2010 Singapore Grand Prix due to heavy traffic during his preparation and slowing his final timed lap of the second session.

[39][40] Vitaly Petrov, 19th, located a balance on the soft tyres and kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) mapping made him happier braking in his Caterham but ran wide at turn three.

[41] Charles Pic, 21st, beat his Marussia teammate Timo Glock in 22nd by four-tenths of a second,[1] due to an error and tyre issues.

[41] An improved car balance put Pedro de la Rosa of the HRT team in 23rd, while a flat-spotted tyre caused by Karthikeyan spinning at turn three hindered his teammate.

[41] Karthikeyan failed to qualify within 107 percent of Hamilton's fastest time in the first session due to a loose rooftop cowling housing a camera.

[5][50] On the next lap, Webber was the first driver to make a scheduled pit stop for the hard compound tyres in an attempt to pass Massa without any aerodynamic turbulence affecting his car.

[46][50] Alonso led Maldonado by 1.1 seconds at the end of lap ten and made his first pit stop for new hard compound tyres.

He struck a detached left-rear tyre leaving his pit box, lifting his car into the air and dropping him to 14th in the race order.

[1][50] On lap 28, Vettel and Massa were given drive-through penalties for ignoring yellow flags telling them to slow for turn one for Schumacher's stricken car, as was evidenced by them using DRS.

[45][46] Pic received a drive-through penalty for ignoring blue flags earlier in the race and delaying Alonso,[50] but he retired in the garage on lap 37 due to driveshaft failure.

Maldonado drew closer to the yet-to-stop Räikkönen by a second,[1] as Alonso entered the pit lane for his final tyre stop on lap 45, falling to third.

[45] The gap between Maldonado and Alonso varied between 1.3 and 0.6 seconds over the next six laps due to the presence of slower cars as the two drivers were caught by Räikkönen, who appeared unlikely to pass them before the race ended unless their tyres degraded.

[45][50] On the 65th lap,[50] Vettel passed Rosberg (whose lack of rear grip created wheelspin) on the inside exiting turn eight for sixth.

[1][45] At the front, Maldonado extended his lead to more than three seconds after Alonso fell back due to a sudden loss of rear grip, which slowed him after mounting the kerbs exiting turn seven with nine laps remaining.

Grosjean followed in fourth, ahead of Kobayashi in fifth, Vettel sixth, Rosberg seventh, Hamilton eighth, Button ninth and Hülkenberg tenth.

Vergne, Ricciardo, di Resta after running slower on the hard compound tyres, Massa, Kovalainen, Petrov, Glock and de la Rosa were the final classified finishers.

"[58] Toto Wolff, a Williams board member, felt Maldonado's performance silenced his critics about his pay driver status and that his last lap crash at the Australian Grand Prix helped improve his mindset.

Senna refuted this, saying he did not expect to hit Schumacher and turned left because he believed the latter would be on the inside upon observing the Mercedes driver's manoeuvre.