Kimi Raikkonen has ended the second day of pre-season testing as fastest man, but was also first to bring out the red flags when his Alfa Romeo broke down.
Kimi Raikkonen has finished the second day of testing in Barcelona as quickest man. The Alfa Romeo driver did a 1:17.091 during a short C5 Soft tyre run in the final hour of track at the Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona, and ended up at the top of the timesheets. However, the Finn broke down on track approaching Turn 9 not long after, triggering a red flag period. He had completed two Grands Prix distances at that point, hitting 134 laps in total.
Raikkonen’s time was a tenth slower than the ultimate pace shown on Day 1, with Hamilton clocking a 1:16.9 on the C4 compound on Wednesday afternoon.
Morning pacesetter Sergio Perez remained in P2 at the end of the day, with his early time ending up some quarter of a second away from what Raikkonen had achieved. He did a mammoth 144 laps in the new RP20 over the day.
Despite only driving in the morning session and sitting out the first hour, Daniel Ricciardo finished in P3 for Renault. Clocking up 41 laps during his three hours of track time before lunch, he did a 1:17.7 to finish less than 0.2 clear of Red Bull’s Alex Albon.
Pierre Gasly finished in P5 after a steady day in his Alpha Tauri, clocking up the most laps of anyone. He did 143 laps by the chequered flag and was a second off the pace set by Raikkonen.
Sebastian Vettel was P6 for Ferrari as he made his first appearance of 2020 testing after being ill for the first day on Wednesday. The German driver did 73 laps and his best time was 1.063 seconds behind Raikkonen.
George Russell continued to pop up in the midfield as he finished P7 for Williams with 116 laps completed, ahead of Charles Leclerc. The Ferrari driver completed the morning session before handing over to Vettel, and did 49 laps.
Lewis Hamilton finished in P9, but there was a lot of attention paid to the Mercedes driver throughout the day following confirmation from the team that they have developed a new steering trick called ‘DAS’ for the W11. You can read all about this technical development right here.
Lando Norris was P10 for McLaren, completing 137 laps in Thursday’s testing, but it was Romain Grosjean in P11 who was the lapcount king on Thursday. He did 158 laps in total before spinning off at Turn 3 in the last half hour. He damaged the rear wing of the VF20 and returned to the pits, and didn’t come out again for the remainder of the day.
Grosjean spins at Turn 4 and bumps the barriers#F1Testing pic.twitter.com/QQfsELDM89
— Formula 1 (@F1) February 20, 2020
Esteban Ocon finished P12 after driving the Renault for the afternoon, while Valtteri Bottas brought up the rear in the Mercedes. After completing an appropriate 77 laps, the Finn encountered an electrical issue with the hybrid power unit and was forced to withdraw.
The third and final day of the first test begins at 9am on Friday morning.
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