The second day of testing for the new Formula One season took place today in which Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen topped the times, narrowly ahead of Lewis Hamilton. For some teams, today was to be hopefully an improvement and yesterdays improvement. For some, today would end as a disappoint, mostly notably for Williams. Lance Stroll brought out an earlyred flag when he spun his FW40 and broke part of his front wing. Unfortunately for him and Williams, they only had one wing and this ended their day, with just 12 laps completed. Both McLaren and Sauber had to do engine changes in what was another disappointing day for the Woking based team. Although Stoffel Vandoorne managed to do more laps then his team mate Alonso, it is someway off what the like of Ferrari and Mercedes have done so far. Vandoorne finished tenth from eleven starters. Antonio Giovinazzi was ninth in an impressive debut for the Sauber team as their test driver, replacing Pascal Werhlein. He also managed a respectible 67 laps, despite the engine change. Renault spent most of the morning in the garage as they fitted new parts to the car, including new brake ducts. Jolyon Palmer who was retained by Renualt managed to complete 53 laps, which is impressive considering he only competed in one session. Only Hamilton and Bottas did the same and they clocked up 66 and 102 laps respestively. It is worth noting that Bottas was focusing on race simulation, hence the large number of laps. Showing strongly and only two seconds off the pace of Ferrari, was Toro Rosso in the hands of Daniil Kyvat. Force India were again strong and Esteban Ocon finished fifth with 86 laps. Next was Kevin Magnussen, who also drove yesterday. He managed a remarkable 118 laps showing that not only is the new Haas car fast, but more importantly it is reliable. Fan favourite, Max Verstappen finished a strong third in a slightly easier day for the Red Bull team. They are still some 1.2s off Ferrari and Mercedes which suggests that they are either sandbagging heavily, or that Ferrari and Mercedes are the class of the field by some margin. Hamilton was the only driver to vernture onto the supersoft tyre and managed a 1:20.983 which stood as the fastest lap before the Ferrari of Raikkonen beat him by 0.023s on the soft tyre. It worth noting however that Hamilton had a bad final sector and most probably would have been more then half a second quicker then Raikkonen. Both Ferrari and Mercedes will be happy so far though. They have both had two faultless days and have easily completed more laps then anyone else. In fact, Lewis Hamilton's morning session was only 3 laps away from McLaren's total over the two days. 1 K. Raikkonen Ferrari 1:20.960 (108) 2 L. Hamilton Mercedes 1:20.983 0.023 (66) 3 M. Verstappen Red Bull 1:22.200 1.240 (89) 4 K. Magnussen Haas 1:22.204 1.244 (118) 5 E. Ocon Force India 1:22.509 1.549 (86) 6 D. Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:22.956 1.996 (68) 7 V. Bottas Mercedes 1:22.986 2.026 (102) 8 J. Palmer Renault 1:24.139 3.179 (53) 9 A. Giovinazzi Sauber 1:24.617 3.657 (67) 10 S. Vandoorne McLaren 1:25.600 4.640 (40) 11 L. Stroll Williams 1:26.040 5.080 (12)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMotorsport News Team Archives
March 2017
Categories |