Bottas keeps his record by the end of the third day

Valtteri Bottas broke the laptime record of the Barcelona track in official testing only three days into pre-season testing.

Staying behind during the whole start of the week, Valtteri Bottas responded this morning by breaking the precedent lap record of the circuit of Barcelona until then hold by Rubens Barichello since 2009. Bottas set a 1:19.705 laptime which should be beaten in the following days.

In second position stand Sebastian Vettel and his Ferrari, both in very good shape following Raikkonen’s best time the day before. With 139 laps covered, Vettel was second by 2 tenths to Bottas but the German was running soft tyres, leaving a potential margin for improvements. Unfortunately, the Ferrari stopped in the main straight with ten minutes to go without clear reason for the moment.

In third place stood Daniel Ricciardo more than 1.5s away from Vettel with the same tyres. Like Mercedes, Renault decided to run both drivers in the same day with Jolyon Palmer and Nico Hülkenberg finishing fourth and fifth, showing the progress of the French team.

Sauber also went through a rather encouraging day with Marcus Ericsson running 122 troubleless laps and setting the fastest time with super-soft tyres of the day. Lewis Hamilton was just behind, more than 2.5s away from Bottas with soft tyres.

For his first day, Romain Grosjean had a quiet day despite being one of the drivers who covered the less laps. Lance Stroll again faced a difficult day with two accidents, reducing his programme to 98 laps.

No problem for McLaren-Honda which ran today with an engine in safety mode and allowed Fernando Alonso to cover 72 laps and give some feedback to the team. Toro Rosso however had a very difficult day as Carlos Sainz went off in the afternoon and Daniil Kvyat ended last in the timesheets with just Alfonso Celis Jr (Force India) between the two teammates.

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