Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

McLaren causes red flag on day one of Pirelli test

Pirelli's first day of wet tyre testing at Paul Ricard saw 285 laps completed with just one red flag caused by McLaren on Monday.

Three teams - McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull - are present at the test at the Paul Ricard circuit, with two days of running on wet tyres scheduled. While track time was scheduled to continue until 5pm local time at Le Castellet, Pirelli completed its running before 4pm and tweeted: "Day one of Pirelli wet test over: 285 laps completed in total from all three teams."

Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo (80 laps) set the fastest time of the day ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne in the McLaren (87 laps) and Kimi Raikkonen who completed 99 laps in the Ferrari. All three were covered by less than a second on a 3.5km layout of the circuit.

There was one interruption to running when Vandoorne stopped out on track in the afternoon, with the McLaren having to be recovered to the pit lane under red flag conditions.

The test is taking place with 2015 cars, with teams not allowed to run any parts which are new for 2016. Only three teams were requested in order to ensure the best track conditions, with Pirelli specifying runs of 10 laps from each team and the cars running 10 seconds apart to maintain consistent conditions.

Vandoorne is the only driver taking part in both days of the test, with Sebastian Vettel set to take over at Ferrari on Tuesday, while Daniil Kvyat will drive for Red Bull.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.