Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsTests

Raikkonen heads Magnussen amid McLaren woes

Kimi Raikkonen bounced back from Wednesday's problems by setting the fastest time of the final morning of the first test.

Yesterday morning Raikkonen was hit by a fuel system issue and only able to complete four laps, but he fared much better on Thursday to top the timing screens with half an hour remain after a time on soft tyres. Raikkonen then put on a set of the new ultrasoft Pirelli tyres - just as Sebastian Vettel had done on Tuesday - and went further clear.

Live timing and coverage of the first test from Barcelona

Raikkonen's time of 1:23.477 left him 1.7s clear at the top of the timing screens but he was still 0.6s off Vettel's best time of the week. The Finn may have been able to lower that benchmark on supersofts even closer to the lunch break, but he caught the back of Daniil Kvyat's Red Bull after setting the fastest first sector and lost time.

Kevin Magnussen continued his strong start to life at Renault with the second fastest time, with his lap of 1:25.263 being set on the soft tyre. Magnussen was top for the first half of the morning and carried out a number of longer runs on the softs before Raikkonen usurped him. Following problems for Jolyon Palmer on the opening two days of testing, Magnussen again enjoyed good mileage as he completed 67 laps.

The same could not be said for Magnussen's former team McLaren, where a coolant leak confined Fernando Alonso to the garage. Alonso had completed just three laps at the start of the day before the problem was discovered, and the Spaniard did not return during the rest of the morning session.

Max Verstappen was third fastest in the Toro Rosso and set the second-highest lap total for the morning, ending the session as the only driver aside from Magnussen to get within two seconds of Raikkonen's time. Once again it was Mercedes with the most mileage, as Lewis Hamilton ended up just one lap shy of breaking the 100-lap mark.

Hamilton was running a new nose on his Mercedes which caught the eye of technical analysts. The nose had been ready to run on Wednesday but the team opted to wait until the final day of the test to introduce it.

Rio Haryanto's second day in the Manor started with 43 laps in the opening session, with the Indonesian driver running the soft tyre late in the morning to set a best time of 1:28.266. After spinning off on Wednesday, Haryanto enjoyed a smoother time in the car during a session which featured no red flags.

Haas only managed 26 laps with Esteban Gutierrez during the four hours, with his time of 1:29.088 being the slowest of those set.

Follow live coverage and timing from pre-season testing here

GALLERY: Pre-season testing

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.