Barcelona II, day 2: Bottas quickest as Haas hit trouble

Valtteri Bottas led the way on the second day of Formula One’s final pre-season test in Barcelona, with the Williams driver using supersoft tyres to eclipse Mercedes’ soft-tyre shod Lewis Hamilton by more than three tenths of a second.

It was a troubled day for the new Haas team, however, with the American squad completing just one lap.

Bottas’ best lap came in the afternoon session, with the Finn bouncing Hamilton to P2 after the Briton had held top spot through the lunch break after working through qualifying simulations on the soft tyre in the morning. Bottas got through a respectable 108 laps on his way to the top of the timesheet.

After his morning’s work, Hamilton handed driving duties at Mercedes to team-mate Nico Rosberg and the German spent the afternoon working through a race simulation, as did many drivers on day two of the test. Rosberg added another 91 laps to Hamilton’s morning tally of 73 to give Mercedes another huge one-day total of 164 laps.

Third quickest today was Kevin Magnussen. The Danish driver completed his pre-season test schedule for Renault by posting 126 laps of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya as he too worked through a race simulation. His best lap came in the morning session, however, as he used the supersoft tyre on a short run to post a time of 1:23.933, 0.7s behind Bottas.

Sebastian Vettel was fourth quickest for Ferrari, though his time of 1:24.611, some 1.3s adrift of Bottas, was set on the medium tyre. The four-time world champion also managed 151 laps in the SF-16H, posting 63 in the morning and another 88 in the afternoon.

Behind Vettel, Jenson Button enjoyed a productive day for McLaren, with the Briton completing 121 laps in the MP4-31. Button’s lap on 1:25.183 came on the soft compound tyre.

After a morning dominated by a lengthy spell of pit stop practice in which he repeatedly cycled through the pit lane without posting a time, Daniel Ricciardo finally got his name on the board some two and half hours into the morning session. In the afternoon the Australian then also completed a race simulation to finish sixth on the timesheet with a best lap of 1:25.235 set on the medium tyre.

Ricciardo finished ahead of Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz, who put in the day’s biggest lap total of 166, Force India’s Sergio Pérez and Rosberg.

It was less successful day for both Sauber and Haas. The Swiss outfit spent much of the morning session in the garage and when they finally got their new C35 car running in the afternoon Marcus Ericsson spun off at Turn 4, bringing out the red flags. He was soon up and running again but completed just 55 laps across the day.

Haas, meanwhile, failed to register a time, with the team completing just a single installation lap before a turbo issue halted their running for the whole day.