Rosberg fastest on final day of first Bahrain test

The lap times continue to drop on the fourth and final day of the first test in Bahrain as Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg clocked his fastest lap in the W05 at 1:33.283; a time within just one second of his pole setting lap from lasts years Bahrain Grand Prix.

Rosberg’s fastest lap was set in the morning session of the test today on the soft compound Pirelli tyre and was enough to hold on to the top spot for the entirety of the day as everybody else could not even get within a second of his time.

Whilst rival teams continue to ‘iron out the bugs’ on their cars and Red Bull Racing’s woes go from bad to worse, Mercedes seem to only grow stronger, using the first test in Bahrain to focus on performance after a strong start to the pre-season tests in Jerez, Spain.

As the morning drew to a close, again it was the McLaren of Jenson Button who was able to get closest to the Mercedes, but was just under two seconds back on the pace of the Mercedes. Jenson Button would also remain in second place for the rest of the day but would fail to improve on his fastest lap time. At the chequered flag, Button was 1.7 seconds back on Rosberg.

Despite working on ‘mechanical issues’ that kept the Red Bull RB10 in the garage for most of Fridays’ testing day, a power unit failure today held Red Bull back from testing, with Ricciardo only posting 13 laps by 13:00 going just sixth fastest. Ricciardo would add another two laps to that tally before Red Bull would once again call an early end to the day in attempt to sort out the onslaught of issues with the RB10 before the third and final pre-season test of the 2014 Formula 1 season takes place next week.

Aiming to make up for lost time yesterday with what the team referred to as “silly” problems, Ferrari were looking for at least 100 laps today. By the lunch break, Raikkonen had put up 42 laps in the F14T and had gone third fastest overall.

Felipe Nasr, the Brazilian youngster who was announced as Williams test and reserve driver just last night, kicked off the first day of his new career posting 47 laps this morning, though found himself almost three seconds off the pace of that set by Rosberg.

Lotus continue to work on the reliability of their new E22 and Pastor Maldonado found his track time in the morning limited to just 17 laps whilst Caterham, coming off a strong day yesterday, got just four laps in before Ericcson stopped on track with smoke pouring from the rear of the car.

Jules Bianchi’s morning consisted of just two laps in the MR03 – two better than Sauber’s Adrian Sutil who had a chassis problem which kept the car in the garage all morning.

With the afternoon underway, Felipe Nasr’s successful run in the morning carried through to the second session of the day. Clocking a lap of 1:37.569, Nasr found himself fourth fastest to finish the day, under a second off the pace of third placed Kimi Raikkonen in the Ferrari. Williams and Nasr will also be pleased with finishing the day at 87 laps completed as the team looks to bounce back into competition for the year ahead.

Kimi Raikkonen’s afternoon picked up where the morning left off, completing a further 4- laps to bring the total lap count for the day to 82, 12 short of the targeted 100 laps. Raikkonen was also the cause of a late afternoon red flag after he crashed his Ferrari at Turn 4, leaving the team with some work to do before the next test next week. Raikkonen would also remain third on the time sheets, failing to improve on the mornings’ position.

Jean-Eric Vergne completed just 19 laps today whilst Pastor Maldonado finished the day with 59 laps in between the team rectifying issues on the car. Renault powered cars continue to struggle with reliability and performance in the ‘front running’ cars, whilst back marker team Caterham is the only team to prove any stability with 100 laps completed yesterday.

Caterham’s success fell short today though. Ericcson managed just 4 laps today whilst teammate Kobayashi added just 17 laps in the afternoon.

Marussia’s Jules Bianchi and Sauber’s Adrian Sutil took the chequered flag with just 5 laps on the day, and no fast laps timed. Marussia and Sauber did well to repair their respective cars, but late afternoon runs were faltered thanks to session stoppages due to red flags.

The third and final pre-season test of the Formula 1 2014 season starts in Bahrain next week, Thursday February 27th through Sunday March 2nd.