Raikkonen fastest, McLaren completes just three laps

Kimi Raikkonen remained quickest on the final day of the first pre-season test as McLaren had a day to forget.

The Finn topped the times at the end of the morning session after a lap on ultrasoft tyres and his benchmark went unbeaten in the afternoon. Raikkonen had little chance to try and lower his time as he spent three hours in the Ferrari garage after lunch but managed to bring his lap tally up to 80 by the end of the session.

After an encouraging opening two days, McLaren's test descended to a frustrating finish as the team failed to set a time on Thursday. Fernando Alonso was confined to the garage after just three laps due to a coolant leak, and investigations failed to provide a fix in time for him to rejoin on the final day of the test.

Having completed 203 laps on the opening two days of the test, McLaren's second two days of testing yielded a total of just 54 laps after a hydraulic leak stopped Jenson Button yesterday.

Daniil Kvyat was second fastest in the Red Bull after also testing the ultrasoft tyre. Just as on Tuesday, only Ferrari and Red Bull ran the ultrasoft tyre and the gap between the two teams was similar on both occasions - 0.7s seconds on Tuesday and 0.8s on the final day.

Alfonso Celis rounded off Force India's strong week with the third quickest time, completing 75 laps and setting a 1:24.840. Celis was enjoying his second day in the VJM09 having driven on Monday and he was 1.7s off Nico Hulkenberg's time from Wednesday having also used the supersoft tyre as the German had.

The driver to complete the most mileage on his own was Kevin Magnussen as Renault's fortunes continued to improve. The Danish driver managed over 150 laps on the final day and was fourth quickest on the soft compound tyre, 1.7s off Raikkonen's pace. The only blot on Renault's copybook was a late stoppage as Magnussen came to a halt at Turn 3 in the final 20 minutes of the day.

Max Verstappen and Felipe Nasr - fifth and sixth respectively - both managed to break the 100-lap barrier, but it was Mercedes who again boasted the most mileage as a team. Lewis Hamilton completed 99 laps in a morning session which ran uninterrupted before Nico Rosberg took over for the afternoon. Three red flags limited Rosberg to 86 laps but he did edge out his team-mate by 0.1s on the timing screens having both run the medium tyre.

Williams spent much of the afternoon session in the garage following aero runs in the morning, with Felipe Massa limited to 54 laps overall, not setting a representative lap time despite running the soft tyres on a number of occasions.

It was another impressive day for Haas even if it had to end its running early when Esteban Gutierrez stopped on track. The team carried out a race simulation in the afternoon session before the Mexican pulled over on the exit of Turn 4 to bring out the red flags.

Turn 4 was a busy area in the final few hours as Rio Haryanto crashed his Manor on the outside of the corner. The Indonesian had 51 laps to his name when he went off and hit the barrier with the rear of his car, not returning to the track for the final two and a half hours.

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GALLERY: Pre-season testing

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Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1 Räikkönen Ferrari  1:23.477 80
2 Kvyat Red Bull  1:24.293 96
3 Celis Force India  1:24.840 75
4 Magnussen Renault Sport  1:25.263 153
5 Verstappen Toro Rosso  1:25.393 110
6 Nasr Sauber  1:26.053 121
7 Rosberg Mercedes  1:26.187 86
8 Hamilton Mercedes  1:26.295 99
9 Massa Williams  1:26.483 54
10 Gutiérrez Haas  1:27.802 89
11 Haryanto Manor  1:28.266 51
12 Alonso McLaren 3
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.

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