Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo was fastest on the second day of the ongoing first Barcelona test, while Mercedes’ pace on the slower compound tyres looked very convincing.
Ricciardo led both in the morning and afternoon sessions to be quickest overall having done 143 laps, a nice boost to the Milton Keynes squad who have been struggling to get laps in with their new RB11. The Australian was ultimately just a hundredth of a second ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in the Ferrari, which has been consistently near the top of the timesheets and indeed been praised by Raikkonen as an immediate improvement over 2014’s lacklustre car, but the Finn was wary of reading into the notoriously unreliable testing orders, stating “we’ve still got a long way ahead of us.”
At Mercedes, Hamilton and Rosberg got a session each in the W06 Hybrid after a fever and neck inflammation respectively sidelined both from doing proper running yesterday. It was Lewis’ race-simulation run in the afternoon on medium Pirelli tyres that was most telling, finishing up less than four tenths off Ricciardo's Red Bull, whose fastest lap was on the soft tyre. Again, testing is never the best indicator of true pace, but between runs like this and coming off of last season’s dominance, but Mercedes do look very strong at this point. It wasn’t the only good news in the team’s garage, with Rosberg making this announcement on Twitter.
McLaren were also able to make progress today despite the Honda power-unit suffering from a faulty seal. A quick fix overnight, ahead of a new part arriving for tomorrow, helped Fernando Alonso complete almost a race distance of the Circuit de Catalunya while focusing on set-up, and ended up just under one-and-a-half seconds off Ricciardo’s best. McLaren's racing director Eric Boullier has had to admit that the team is about "50 percent behind" regarding their development plans, so today must seem something of a miracle given the ongoing reliability issues.
New Lotus reserve driver Jolyon Palmer had his first day in the Lotus E23 and was 8th fastest ahead of Marcus Ericsson’s Sauber in 9th, which with 113 laps looks like much more of a heavier-on-fuel run than what the team has done so far in testing. At the bottom was Carlos Sainz Jr., who despite a spin in his Toro Rosso still just managed to run his own century of laps.
First Barcelona Test Day Two Results
1. Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull-Renault 1:24.574 143 laps
2. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1:24.584 90 laps
3. Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes 1:24.672 88 laps
4. Sergio Perez Force India-Mercedes 1:24.702 121 laps
5. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:24.923 89 laps
6. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:25.556 66 laps
7. Fernando Alonso McLaren-Honda 1:25.961 59 laps
8. Jolyon Palmer Lotus-Mercedes 1:26.280 77 laps
9. Marcus Ericsson Sauber-Ferrari 1:27.334 113 laps
10. Carlos Sainz Jr. Toro Rosso-Renault 1:28.945 100 laps
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