Testing report
Formula 1 Barcelona March testing
Vettel tops penultimate test day by over a second
Sebastian Vettel put Ferrari on top by over a second of the penultimate day of pre-season Formula 1 testing at Barcelona, as nobody got close to his unofficial lap record.
Jamie Klein
Edited: Mar 8, 2018, 6:46 PM
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The Ferrari driver's hypersoft effort of 1m17.182s stood as the day's quickest by 1.178s, as teams elected to focus largely on long-run pace in the afternoon session.
That meant most of the times from the morning did not change in the afternoon, with Haas driver Kevin Magnussen using supersofts to end up second fastest ahead of a slew of hypersoft runners.
Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly equipped the hypersofts in the final hour to move up to third, just 0.003s behind Magnussen, while Carlos Sainz did likewise to go fifth behind Renault teammate Nico Hulkenberg.
Stoffel Vandoorne was sixth quickest on the strength of his morning time as McLaren finally got serious mileage this week, clocking 151 laps.
Vandoorne finished one place ahead of Marcus Ericsson, who caused the day's sole stoppage when he spun his Sauber at Turn 4 with just over an hour left on the clock.
The otherwise uninterrupted running allowed teams to rack up impressive lap counts.
Max Verstappen focused on race simulations and was second slowest, but the Red Bull driver's 187-lap tally was only beaten by Vettel, who only reached 188 laps with bonus circulation after the chequered flag while conducting practice starts.
Gasly (169), Force India's Sergio Perez (159 laps) and Magnussen (153) hitting a century and a half and Mercedes reaching a combined tally of 181 across Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.
Hamilton got ahead of Bottas on a long run on medium tyres late in the afternoon.
Lance Stroll focused on long runs again and was slowest of all having taken over from Robert Kubica at Williams.
PosDriverTeamTimeGapLaps 1 Vettel Ferrari 1m17.182s 188 2 Magnussen Haas 1m18.360s +1.178 153 3 Gasly Toro Rosso 1m18.363s +1.181 169 4 Hulkenberg Renault 1m18.675s +1.493 79 5 Sainz Renault 1m18.725s +1.543 69 6 Vandoorne McLaren 1m18.855s +1.673 151 7 Ericsson Sauber 1m19.244s +2.062 148 8 Bottas Mercedes 1m19.532s +2.114 84 9 Hamilton Mercedes 1m19.575s +2.350 97 10 Kubica Williams 1m19.629s +2.447 73 11 Perez Force India 1m19.634s +2.452 159 12 Verstappen Red Bull 1m19.842s +2.660 187 13 Stroll Williams 1m20.262s +3.080 67
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