The Brazilian, who put aside Sunday's slips and slides to amass 121 laps, clocked a 1:22.625, half a second up on the previous best set by Nico Rosberg on Sunday. Massa's time was posted over a two-lap qualifying-style run.He wasn't the only driver to move to the front with a short burst as Mark Webber claimed second place with the exact same run. The Aussie, though, was 0.817s slower on his flying lap than his Ferrari rival.
Sebastien Buemi continued Toro Rosso's fine form in the STR6 as he finished the day in third place, less than a second behind Massa's Ferrari.
The Swiss driver also had the joys of another problem-free day, putting in 90 laps as the third of four pre-season tests reached its conclusion.
"Today went well and I am happy with what we achieved. We got through the entire programme we had planned and did enough laps to improve our understanding of the various types of Pirelli tyre," said Buemi.
"Along with the two other drivers, we gathered a lot of data over the past four days here in Barcelona and it will be important to analyse everything very carefully to find the right way to move forward in terms of reliability and performance, when we tackle the final pre-season test session."
Nick Heidfeld, despite not having Renault's KERS unit on board, was fourth ahead of Lewis Hamilton. The latter covered in 107 laps as McLaren put some much-needed mileage on their MP4-26.
Sixth place went to Williams rookie Pastor Maldonado, although it was by not means an easy day for the Venezuelan. He again found himself spending time in the team's garage when he came to a halt out on track in the afternoon, bringing out the red flags.
Adrian Sutil and Sergio Perez were next in line ahead of Jerome D'Ambrosio, Michael Schumacher and Jarno Trulli - the latter three all responsible for red flags.
Trulli caused the day's first stoppage when he crashed at Turn Nine. It also resulted in Team Lotus stopping their test as the team did not have all the parts needed to rebuild the car.
Trulli has already been cleared of all blame with tech boss Mike Gascoyne saying the crash was caused by a malfunction of the T128.
D'Ambrosio was responsible for the second red, stopping out on track in the morning while Schumacher caused the day's final stoppage in the last half-an-hour of testing.
It was a sharp and sudden fall back down to earth for the Mercedes GP team, who had set the pace on Sunday with Rosberg and had completed three days without any problems.
Times
01. Massa Ferrari 1:22.625 121 laps
02. Webber Red Bull 1:23.442 + 0.817 69 laps
03. Buemi Toro Rosso 1:23.550 + 0.925 90 laps
04. Heidfeld Lotus Renault 1:23.657 + 1.032 95 laps
05. Hamilton McLaren 1:24.003 + 1.378 107 laps
06. Maldonado Williams 1:24.057 + 1.432 121 laps
07. Sutil Force India 1:24.177 + 1.552 64 laps
08. Perez Sauber 1:24.515 + 1.890 74 laps
09. D'Ambrosio Virgin 1:26.501 + 3.876 50 laps
10. Schumacher Mercedes 1:27.079 + 4.454 114 laps
11. Trulli Team Lotus 1:29.992 + 7.367 18 laps
Source: Planet-F1
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