Almost exactly three months ago Jean-Eric Vergne was crowned Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International Champion - and this week the 20-year-old Frenchman was propelled on to the world stage at the wheel of a Scuderia Toro Rosso F1 car. Vergne was taking part, along with 2009 British F3 Champion Daniel Ricciardo, in the annual F1 Young Driver tests, which concluded today (Wednesday) in Abu Dhabi.

Vergne ended his F1 baptism with a creditable ninth-best time overall and 61 valuable laps of the Yas Marina circuit under his belt. Jean-Eric told Autosport.com that felt he had made a useful contribution to STR’s 2011 build-up: “Today we did some development of the car for next year and I’m pretty happy because I thought it would be hard to do this. I was quite surprised that we were able to do the whole programme.

“I wasn’t really nervous, the preparation beforehand has been good and so all I had to do was jump in the car and drive. The team, working with so many people, they are all so professional - so my first time in Formula 1 has been a really good experience.” Jean-Eric is now on his way to Macau for Sunday’s Grand Prix, in which he will make his swansong appearance in a Carlin F3 car.

The young driver test was dominated by Ricciardo in the World Championship-winning Red Bull RB6; the Australian’s best lap was 1m 38.102s, some 1.3s faster than Sebastian Vettel’s Grand Prix pole time in the same car. Daniel was seven-tenths ahead of his closest young rival, Renault driver Jerome D’Ambrosio. Sam Bird (Mercedes), Gary Paffett (McLaren) and Sergio Perez (Sauber) made it four ex-British F3 men in the young driver top six.