Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsTests

Vettel fastest again as Mercedes finally stops

Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time on the final morning of pre-season testing in Barcelona as Ferrari again set the pace.

Ferrari has been fastest on five of the eight test days so far, with Kimi Raikkonen having been quickest on both Tuesday and Thursday this week. Taking over for the final day, Vettel - who also tested the Halo cockpit protection in the morning - was the only driver to dip under the 1m23s mark.

Vettel's best lap of 1:22.852 came on the supersoft tyre, leaving him 0.1s shy of Raikkonen's lap on the ultrasoft from Thursday which was the quickest seen so far in pre-season. Vettel did run the ultrasoft moments after setting the pace but was unable to lower the benchmark.

Carlos Sainz was second fastest on another encouraging morning for Toro Rosso. The Spaniard was only a quarter of a second slower than Vettel despite using last year's Ferrari power unit, though his quickest lap did come on the purple-marked ultrasoft tyre.

Force India's strong pre-season continued as Sergio Perez set the third fastest lap, with a 1:23.721 on the supersoft being half a second slower than Nico Hulkenberg managed on the penultimate day of testing, though the German was running the ultrasoft.

Despite plenty of running for the majority of teams, Mercedes again managed the most laps. However, there was finally a stoppage for the W07 as Lewis Hamilton came to a halt on the pit straight with ten minutes remaining before the lunch break, having completed 69 laps. The triple world champion will now hand over the car to Nico Rosberg for the afternoon session.

Red Bull and McLaren both enjoyed solid running throughout the morning, with neither team opting to run the softest two compounds before lunch. However, Jolyon Palmer suffered more reliability problems in the Renault and was listed to just 31 laps. Palmer has yet to have a clean day - compared to team-mate Kevin Magnussen who exceeded 100 laps on each of his four days in the car - but did get in a late run to go seventh fastest.

Felipe Massa set the slowest time for Williams during the morning session - 2.8s off the pace - though he completed plenty of early mileage and carried out a number of constant speed tests down the pit straight on intermediate tyres.

Manor rookie Rio Haryanto endured a frustrating final morning as he failed to complete any running at all before 1pm. Manor suffered from a mechanical problem which prevented the MRT05 from even completing an installation lap until the final five minutes of the session, taking advantage of a marshalling system check which ensured the track was live until 1305 local time.

Follow live coverage and timing from pre-season testing here

GALLERY: Pre-season testing

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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.