Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

McLaren laps just twice as Bottas tops final morning

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McLaren completed just two laps on the final morning of testing in Barcelona as Valtteri Bottas set the pace for Williams.

Following Friday’s encouraging 101 laps, McLaren’s weekend has been dismal so far with just 39 laps possible for Kevin Magnussen yesterday before an oil leak brought an early end to proceedings. Jenson Button returned to the car for the final day of testing, but the MP4-30 failed to leave the garage until the final five minutes of the session, with the team saying it had been carrying out “systems checks”.

Williams continued to try and chase the fastest times set by Mercedes as Bottas went quickest in the morning session. The Finn posted a 1:23.063 on the supersoft tyre to go almost half a second clear of the rest of the field, completing 73 laps in the process.

Bottas’ time was 0.04s slower than Lewis Hamilton posted on soft tyres on Saturday, but 0.4s faster than Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari as Williams looked to have the edge in terms of one lap pace. Vettel followed a similar programme to Kimi Raikkonen on Sunday morning, setting a supersoft time in the closing stages.

Felipe Nasr was third quickest in the Sauber on the final morning, with the rookie’s time also coming on the supersoft tyre as he completed the most mileage in the C34.

Sergio Perez continued Force India’s reliable start with its VJM08 as he completed another 54 laps in the new car. Having only rolled the car out for the first time on Friday, Force India has now completed 288 laps with its 2015 car, 64 fewer than McLaren has managed in the entire pre-season.

Mercedes enjoyed a more productive morning than had been the case on the previous two days as Nico Rosberg ended the session fifth fastest. Rosberg and team-mate Lewis Hamilton had both spent significant time in the garage on Friday and Saturday working on set-up changes but Rosberg completed 68 laps during the opening session on the final day.

Max Verstappen was sixth for Toro Rosso having joined the majority of teams in conducting aero runs during the opening stages of the day. Verstappen set a best time 0.3s quicker than Daniel Ricciardo, with the Red Bull having caused the only red flag of the morning session when the RB11 stopped at the end of the pit lane with an ERS issue.

The problem limited Ricciardo to just 10 laps, with only Pastor Maldonado’s Lotus setting a slower lap time during the morning session.

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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.