Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel in front as Barcelona F1 pace heats up

By Adam Cooper
Published

Sebastian Vettel set a blistering pace with a series of fast times on Thursday morning in Barcelona, despite seemingly backing off across the line and thus disguising his true potential with a slower than optimum final sector time.

Once again the Mercedes, Williams and Sauber drivers took turns at the wheel of their respective cars, so 13 drivers appeared during the day. For all those not sharing and thus running again on Friday, this was their final day of track action before practice in Melbourne on March 24.

Vettel’s best lap of 1m19.024s with ultrasoft tires set a new benchmark for the hybrid era, and the lap was 3.6s faster than the best testing time of 2016. The German, who completed an impressive 156 laps on Thursday, has played down suggestions by Lewis Hamilton that Ferrari is now favorite.

Hamilton himself logged a lap of 1m19.352s, also in the morning on ultrasoft tires, before handing the Mercedes W08 to Valtteri Bottas. The Silver Arrows team had another trouble-free day, adding another 147 laps to its winter tally.

"It was another strong day for me and the team," said Bottas. "I did some good mileage - 95 laps - and some very interesting long run testing this afternoon on the different tire compounds, as well as setup work and evaluation of all the parts we've got for the car.  We're still finding out which of these parts are the best suited to our car and how exactly we can draw 100 percent out of the package. Every day is still a massive learning curve for us and we've still got a lot of work to do to get it right."

Esteban Ocon was third fastest for Force India, albeit a second off Vettel, having also set his best time on ultrasofts. He took ran a lot of miles, reaching the 137 lap mark.

Toro Rosso should improve form as Daniil Kvyat set the fourth best time of the day, although the Russian lost time after the car came to a halt on track. He just edged out Kevin Magnussen, as the Haas driver logged 119 laps.

"It was good to be able to complete so many laps; it was definitely a very productive day for both myself and my engineering crew," said Kvyat. "We continued to prepare ourselves for the season ahead and completed performance runs and race simulations, which was important to do after losing some valuable track time last week. We also managed to do some experimental tests and we now have a lot of valuable data to go through. I’d say we are now decently ready for Melbourne, so bring it on!"

Behind them, Red Bull Racing driver Daniel Ricciardo finished the day sixth on the board.

https://twitter.com/F1/status/839910871153299456

It was bad day for both McLaren and Renault, with Stoffel Vandoorne and Jolyon Palmer both triggering red flags by stopping on the circuit and running far fewer laps than their rivals.

Williams did not set any fast times on Thursday as the team focused on race preparation, but Lance Stroll had another solid session, logging 85 laps in the morning before Felipe Massa took over the FW40.

"I was doing long runs on medium tires and getting used to the car on them, which is good," said Stroll. "We did a lot of laps. I am still getting to know the car a bit better, so it was a positive morning. I will be in the car all day tomorrow. I still have the ultrasoft to try, but I am getting to grips with things so I am happy with that."

"Because of the red flags we couldn’t do the full race simulation, with pitstops but we more than managed to cover the distance we were targeting without issue," added Massa. "With the car doing two full race distances today it shows the FW40 is reliable, and that’s positive. Now I’m just ready to start the season! I’m not driving tomorrow but I hope the team has another great day with Lance. I just hope that we can start the season well in Australia and we can use everything we’ve learned here in the test to prepare the car for the first race."

The test concludes tomorrow with the eighth and final day of testing.

Thursday results

1. Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) 1m19.024s
2. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) 1m19.352s [AM]
3. Esteban Ocon (Force India) 1m20.161s
4. Daniil Kvyat (Toro Rosso) 1m20.416s
5. Kevin Magnussen (Haas) 1m20.504s
6. Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull) 1m20.824s
7. Stoffel Vandoorne (McLaren) 1m21.348s
8. Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes) 1m22.038s [PM]
9. Pascal Wehrlein (Sauber) 1m22.347s [PM]
10. Jolyon Palmer (Renault) 1m22.418s
11. Marcus Ericsson (Sauber) 1m23.330s [AM]
12. Felipe Massa (Williams) 1m24.443s [PM]
13. Lance Stroll (Williams) 1m24.863s [AM]

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