Massa fastest as problems hit McLaren, Mercedes

Felipe Massa set the fastest time of pre-season testing at Barcelona so far on an encouraging day for Williams at the Circuit de Catalunya.

With Lewis Hamilton having been fastest in the morning session, Massa attempted a race simulation at the start of the afternoon but had to abort it after his second pit stop. Returning to the track later in the day, Massa set a time of 1:23.500 on the soft tyre as he became the first driver to break the 1m24s barrier this pre-season.

Marcus Ericsson did complete a race simulation for Sauber - posting consistent lap times during a long stint on the medium tyre - before fitting a set of supersoft tyres and posting the second fastest time with a 1:24.276 in the final hour of the day. Ericsson also completed the most mileage with a total of 122 laps.

Mileage was something Mercedes struggled for after Hamilton’s encouraging morning. The opening session saw Hamilton top the times on the medium tyre, but having completed 48 laps he was confined to the garage for the rest of the afternoon as an MGU-K problem ended Mercedes’ running early.

48 laps would be something of a dream for McLaren at this stage of testing as its pre-season woes continued. Jenson Button completed just seven laps before a hydraulic leak proved terminal for the team’s plans on the first day. So far in nine days of testing, McLaren has managed just 210 laps while Button himself has completed only 93 laps.

With teams focusing on upgrade packages at the start of the final test, Thursday saw relatively limited running compared to the previous week. Daniil Kvyat was fourth fastest for Red Bull but only just completed a race distance over the day as he managed 75 laps. His best time was also 2.4s slower than Massa, though the Red Bull did not run the soft tyre.

Romain Grosjean was fifth quickest for a Lotus team which had topped three of the four days during the second test. Grosjean was just 0.2s slower than Kvyat with 75 laps to his name as he also evaluated new parts for Lotus.

Kimi Raikkonen was more productive in the afternoon session having managed only 28 laps in the opening four hours of the day. Raikkonen added a further 52 laps in the afternoon but completed the majority of his running on the hard tyre and set a best time 2.8s off the pace.

While the Red Bull stopped at the end of the pit lane to cause a brief red flag period at the start of the day, Carlos Sainz Jr caused the only real delay as he stopped at Turn 12 in the afternoon, interrupting Ericsson’s race simulation. Toro Rosso was running an upgrade which was “a radical difference” to the previous specification STR10, ending the day over three seconds off the pace having carried out numerous constant speed tests.

Click here for the gallery from day one of the final test