F1: Vettel sets the pace again in Spain as Mercedes logs miles
Sebastian Vettel once again topped the times for Ferrari as 2016 F1 testing continued into a second day at Barcelona.
The top times were skewed by the fact that both Vettel and second placed Daniel Ricciardo both set their best times on the new purple-colored ultrasoft tires, which will only be used at street tracks during the season. In contrast, Nico Rosberg was on the slower medium tires all day.
“We work on a lot of things, you can imagine it's a brand new car,” said Vettel, who stopped on track right at the end of the day. “We're trying to understand how the car reacts. We know that we need to do a lot of laps. I think it's a step forward this car, so it's positive, also I think the power unit has improved. There's still a lot of stuff that we know is coming, and we know we have to improve, but overall with these two days, I am happy.”
“It was a good day,” said Red Bull Racing's Daniel Ricciardo. “We did pretty much every run on our schedule and run plans are always pretty optimistic so I think we’ll take that today. We put in over 100 laps and we ran pretty faultlessly. It was good for me to get a lot more laps. We also tried a few compounds, which maybe is not so relevant at this time of year but it was good to try them anyways.
“So, for me, a positive two days; you can’t ask for too much more. I’m looking forward to next week’s test now – I’ll have just two more days and then it’s Melbourne. I’m just excited to roll it over now and to get to Australia.”
Once again Mercedes logged a marathon lap total, Rosberg adding 172 to the 156 achieved on Monday by Lewis Hamilton. It was a day of impressive reliability for most teams, although once again Renault was in trouble as Jolyon Palmer stopped on track with an engine issue.
Meanwhile, the progress of Haas continued to be one of the big talking points in Spain as Esteban Gutierrez took over from Romain Grosjean. The Mexican completed a healthy total of 79 laps.
“It's fantastic, I've been waiting for this moment for a long time,” said Gutierrez. “Overall a very positive feeling. I think we have a lot of work ahead, but the baseline and everything appears to be pretty fair. I feel great in the car, and it's a really good start.”
Full Tuesday results:
