McLaren's Eric Boullier says the team received a boost on Wednesday following Fernando Alonso's reliable running, which allowed the Spaniard to rack up 72 laps.
Both Alonso and team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne have hit trouble during testing, completing a combined 69 laps across the opening two days, but Alonso was able to surpass that on the third day alone as McLaren and Honda enjoyed a more productive outing.
Boullier believes the problems the team has encountered can be put behind them, and is hopeful of further trouble-free running to allow the team to complete the necessary mileage it needs to run through the programme.
"Today has been a much more successful day, and we’re happy that we’ve been able to execute our testing programme proper with a full day of running," said the Frenchman. "I’m pleased to report that there were no major issues, and the team completed our planned run programme for the day.
"We’re confident that the issues we’ve experienced so far are glitches and part of the usual challenges faced in testing. The problems on Monday and Tuesday meant we lost valuable track time, which means glitches that occur in day one can then spread into day three, simply because of the lack of mileage.
"The more we run, the more we learn, and, naturally, the more there is potential for issues to be discovered that we need to fix. However, there is a minimum mileage figure that we can do that allows us enough data to understand the car and how to set it up, and from there we can move forward.
"While we shouldn’t get carried away, today’s running has provided the team with a boost after a tricky couple of days, and I hope we continue collecting more mileage and data tomorrow to end the first week."
Honda's Yusuke Hasegawa expanded on the troubles faced by the Japanese manufacturer across the course of the test.
"The past two days have been difficult for us due to the power unit issues we encountered," admitted Hasegawa. "However, today we were able to make some progress and complete our programme, in which we tested the durability and deployment of the PU in accordance with our schedule.
"We have already found a solution to the oil tank issue we had on the first day with Fernando, and we will shortly receive clarification from Honda R&D in Sakura on the root cause of the power failure experienced in Stoffel’s car yesterday.
"We proved certain durability in today’s session and we hope to make further advances together with McLaren tomorrow."
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