Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Vettel tops second day of Pirelli test

Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of the second day of wet tyre testing for Pirelli as McLaren again hit trouble.

Taking over from team-mate Kimi Raikkonen on Tuesday, Vettel - who completed 134 laps - set the pace on a drying track late in the day with a 1:06.750 leaving him 0.1s clear of Daniil Kvyat. Red Bull had Kvyat driving on day two after Daniel Ricciardo opened the test, with the Russian completing 113 laps on the 3.5km configuration at Paul Ricard.

Stoffel Vandoorne was hit by a power unit failure late in Monday's running which caused a red flag, and on Tuesday morning he again had to curtail an early run to bring the McLaren back in to the pits. The team worked to fix the car before Vandoorne returned to the track to complete 127 laps on the second day.

The three teams are all running prototype full wet tyres for Pirelli, with Raikkonen's initial feedback after Monday suggesting he prefers the 2015 specification of wet tyre.

Only three teams were required for the test as three cars running was the maximum the circuit could take at one time before it would cause instability in the wet track conditions.

Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren all had to use 2015-specifiaction cars with no new parts on them, meaning a number of parts were reaching the end of their life.

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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.