Second day’s pace was set by Mercedes driver that out-performed McLaren in the morning session of pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Stoffel Vandoone produce the fastest lap that McLaren has produced at Barcelona over the days at the same circuit last year season.
But Vandoorne’s flying lap with 1:20.325 time was dislodged from the top spot by Mercedes driver, Valtteri Bottas, with 1:20.270 time.
While Mercedes was on soft tyres, McLaren had the hypersoft tyres, which are the new Pirelli addition to its stock.
Sebastian Vettel with its Ferrari make his first appearance of the pre-season, in not so Barcelona’s weather, which had restricted Vettel to five laps in the opening three hours.
However, he was able to mark his presence at the end of morning session with the third quickest lap of 0.740 seconds behind McLaren.
Red Bull’s machine driven by Max Verstappen was struck by fuel leakage, which then restricted him to one installation lap.
Most of the teams focused on aerodynamic evaluation of their machines rather than making marking lap times.
Lewis Hamilton and Robert Kubica are due to appear in the afternoon session.
Could the test be extended?
The probability of extending the test to Friday has been under discussion keeping in view the weather of Barcelona. However, the chances to extend it to Friday is highly unlikely, even though it has support from many teams. Because Williams has scheduled its filming and sponsor day on the same date.
Claire Williams said, “We haven’t been officially asked about Friday.
“I know there have been some conversations about potentially extending the test because of the weather. Yesterday afternoon was quite difficult for all teams to get some decent track running but today we’ve got clear skies, although it’s a little cold.
“We need to see how the next few hours evolve and come back and have the conversation about it. I don’t think every team is there lobbying for the test to continue as far as I’m aware. There are a few teams that would like it to continue but we do have a scheduled filming day, we have booked the circuit and that’s important to us.
“I know Ferrari have the same scheduled on Saturday so maybe if that was the general consensus, people wanted to extend the test, we look at a day extending it into next week.”
