Kimi Raikkonen led the second day of Formula 1 pre-season testing at Barcelona, putting Ferrari just 0.023 seconds clear of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.
Using soft compound tyres, Raikkonen set a best time of 1m20.960s just over an hour into Tuesday afternoon’s running – narrowly bettering Hamilton’s session-topping morning effort of 1m20.983s, which was set using supersofts.
Hamilton’s effort was still good enough to finish the day second overall, with Valtteri Bottas taking over driving duties for Mercedes for the afternoon.
The Finnish driver’s prime focus was on completing a race simulation, his best lap of 1m22.986s only ending up good enough for seventh on the leaderboard.
Despite a lurid sideways moment at Turn 9, Bottas managed to rack up 102 laps in the W08, running with the double T-wing trialled this morning by Hamilton for much of the afternoon.
That left Mercedes with a combined total of 168 laps for the day.
Max Verstappen managed to deliver Red Bull the third best time of the day, a 1m22.600s, on soft tyres, four thousandths ahead of the Haas of Kevin Magnussen, running on supersofts.
On his second full day of running, Magnussen completed a total of 119 laps, with Raikkonen the only other man to break into three figures with 108 laps on the board.
Esteban Ocon was fifth for Force India on supersofts, ahead of Daniil Kvyat’s Toro Rosso on softs, Bottas and the Renault of Jolyon Palmer, who completed 53 laps after managing just an installation lap in the morning.
Antonio Giovinazzi, who was ninth fastest, also managed to log 67 laps in the Sauber after a power unit problem robbed him of much of the morning session.
Besides Lance Stroll, who sat out the afternoon after his spin during the morning session, the slowest man of the day was McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne.
The Belgian made his first on-track appearance of the afternoon with just over two hours to go, after McLaren spent the best part of five hours replacing the MCL32’s power unit, but only managed a further 11 laps on top of the 29 he did in the morning.
His best time was a 1m25.600s, set on soft tyres, which left him 4.640s off the pace.
Source : www.motorsport.com
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