Site icon FormulaRapida.net

Vandoorne leads after five hours of testing

Copyright: McLaren

CIRCUIT DE BARCELONA-CATALUNYA | Since the day began and the green flag waved at 9:00, drivers quickly went on track to get the mileage they had lost yesterday. All cars had done at least an installation lap during the first half hour. Stoffel Vandoorne was the first one to get a lap time, but it was not competitive at all. At this early stage, all drivers were using full wet tyres.

Vandoorne and Marcus Ericsson were the only drivers to set lap times. Sergey Sirotkin also went on track, but only to do some installation laps. At 10:00, the Sauber driver lost the control of his car and ended up on the gravel trap in turn 2. The first red flag of the day was deployed.

When the green flag waved again, Vandoorne was the most active driver and completed a decent stint with several consecutive laps. Pierre Gasly also got some mileage and Sirotkin became the leader at 10:40.

Five minutes later, Sebastian Vettel became the first driver to go on track with intermediate tyres and started improving his times. Sergio Pérez went on track after many minutes of inactivity and so did Kevin Magnussen a few minutes later. Max Verstappen was being the only driver who was being unable to go out.

Bottas and Vettel started driving quite fast and constantly improving their time. The Finnish driver became the leader at 11:15. Vandoorne took a small rest for some minutes and then returned to track to improve to second place.

A few minutes before 13:00, drivers began to put slick tyres and times were quickly beaten by seconds. Lead changes were continuous. Later, Vandoorne put the hypersoft tyres and did a great 1:20.513, two seconds ahead of everyone. He would finally improve to a 1:20.068.

In the afternoon there are five scheduled driver changes: Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton, Lance Stroll and Charles Leclerc should jump into their respective cars

Results at 14:00:

Pos. Nº. Driver Team Time Laps
1 2 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren 1:20.068 87
2 5 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1:20.824 55
3 27 Nico Hülkenberg Renault 1:22.507 49
4 77 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 1:22.789 60
5 10 Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso 1:22.879 54
6 9 Marcus Ericsson Alfa Romeo Sauber 1:23.825 79
7 20 Kevin Magnussen Haas 1:24.286 31
8 33 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:26.338 23
9 11 Sergio Pérez Force India 1:27.426 16
10 35 Sergey Sirotkin Williams 1:31.979 47