A heavy crash for Pierre Gasly at Turn 9 was the main story from a busy afternoon of long runs on the penultimate day of pre-season testing.

The Red Bull driver hit the barrier at the high-speed Campsa corner during his race simulation, with the incident coming just a handful of laps after pitting for tyres.

Soon after there was the sight of team personnel dismantling their pitwall structure, suggesting the damage done might have ended their running for the week, but that was quickly denied by Red Bull.

On the timesheet, there was no change in the top four as Charles Leclerc's morning benchmark of 1m16.231s remained unbeaten.

The Monegasque then followed it up with a strong long run in the afternoon, which was comparable with Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas who was on track at the same time before Gasly's off.

Daniel Ricciardo was the only new addition near the top as the Australian took over from Nico Hulkenberg at Renault and would finish fifth, two-tenths clear of his German teammate.

After a steady morning, Lance Stroll did indeed rack up the kilometres in the afternoon as the Canadian surpassed 100 laps in the Racing Point in addition to the seventh best time.

There was a small problem, however, as the RP19 stopped on track with just over an hour to go causing a brief red flag.

Antonio Giovinazzi remained eighth for Alfa Romeo ahead of Romain Grosjean in the Haas, it was a bad session though for the Frenchman as an exhaust issue discovered over lunch limited him to just 16 laps.

Lewis Hamilton was 10th ahead of fellow Brit George Russell in the Williams, who would complete the most distance for a single driver on Thursday with 140 laps to his name.

Kevin Magnussen followed with Bottas rounding out the timing screen as he focused on long runs in the Mercedes with 96 laps in the afternoon.

A full look at Thursday's standings can be seen below: