Barcelona Testing – Kimi Raikkonen was fastest at the end of the morning session on the final day of pre-season testing.
The Finn did a lap time of 1:18.634 on the supersoft tyre; not only quicker was it the quickest time of testing so far but Raikkonen was the first to put in a sub-1:19 lap time during testing.
His time was just three tenths of a second away from the fastest ever lap around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, set by Felipe Massa in an interim 2008-9 hybrid car during testing.
Lap counts were not particularly impressive as the session was interrupted four times by red flags. Firstly, by Romain Grosjean who put his Haas in the gravel trap at Turn 5.
His Haas also came to a halt with just fifteen minutes of the session remaining at Turn 10. The Frenchman finished the session in eighth.
The other two were caused by Fernando Alonso as McLaren had one of their worst mornings of pre-season testing. Alonso first stopped at Turn 9 and, once the team had fixed the issue, when he went back out on track he stopped again almost immediately at Turn 4.
The team blamed an intermittent electrical shutdown for the problems, the same issue Stoffel Vandoorne suffered on Thursday.
Alonso was last in the session, with a mere 19 laps clocked for the session.
Max Verstappen was second fastest in the session with 31 laps completed. He was eight tenths of a second off the pace, also on the supersoft tyre.
Carlos Sainz Jr in the Toro Rosso was third fastest on the same tyre, edging out Valtteri Bottas for third fastest in the session.
Bottas just missed out on a half a century of laps with 49 clocked, but it was enough to push Mercedes past a total of 1,000 laps completed during testing.
Lewis Hamilton will take over from his team mate for the afternoon session.
Nico Hulkenberg was fourth fastest ahead of former team mate Sergio Perez, both using the ultrasoft tyre for their fastest laps. Hulkenberg will hand the car over to Jolyon Palmer this afternoon.
Lance Stroll was seventh fastest on the soft tyre, doing the most mileage of the session with 59 laps, tied with Marcus Ericsson in ninth. Both drivers will have their team mates complete the day’s running.
To see the results from the morning session, click here.
