Barcelona Tests II – Day 3: Mercedes and Williams Still on Top

The third session of private testing this week was marked by race simulations carried out by several teams. This was the case for Ferrari, Sauber, Lotus, and Toro Rosso.

In total today, seven out of nine teams completed more than 100 laps. Only McLaren and Mercedes, slowed down by mechanical issues, couldn’t reach this milestone.

With the sun present until 3 p.m. and very varied track temperatures, the times cannot be representative of the settings tested on the single-seaters.

Indeed, with a hotter track (25°C at noon) and soft tires, some cars can be faster than with super-soft tires at 3 PM when the track had dropped below 20°C. All of this, combined with the varying fuel loads from one stint to another, truly makes the drivers’ performances unreadable today.

We can nevertheless note that reliability is there for most of the teams. Force India in particular, for the second day with its Force India VJM08, completed no less than 158 laps, equivalent to the distance of two races in 8 hours of testing. Nico Hülkenberg didn’t have time to tweet today unlike yesterday:

Nico Hülkenberg est en piste avec la Force India, mais il vient de publier un tweet. Trop fort ce @NicoHülkenberg #F1

— Motors Inside – F1 (@MotorsInside) 27 Février 2015

In the rankings, Lewis Hamilton on soft tires in the Mercedes recorded the best time, 0.3 seconds off the lap time set by his teammate yesterday. He is ahead of Felipe Massa in the Williams, also on soft tires, by 0.240 seconds. Kimi Räikkönen in the Ferrari is 3rd, 0.254 seconds behind the reigning world champion.

Kimi Räikkönen has 136 laps on his counter. He is the second most enduring today. He tried out race simulations, notably using tires without color markings to avoid giving too much information to rivals… The Ferrari did not encounter any particular problems.

Carlos Sainz in the Toro Rosso also completed many laps. He also caused a red flag at the very end of the day due to a failure of his STR.

Romain Grosjean is 5th today with his Lotus. He tried different aerodynamic settings and completed 116 laps. Notably, we saw two different front wings this morning on the E23.

Marcus Ericsson also covered the distance of two Grand Prix; exactly 123 laps. He completed stints of about ten laps and caused a red flag at the end of the day by breaking down at turn number 3. The Sauber driver is 6th today. He set his time in the morning.

At the bottom of the standings, we find Kevin Magnussen, who was replacing Fernando Alonso to drive the McLaren. He was only able to complete 39 laps due to an oil leak, particularly in the afternoon. McLaren organized a conference in the afternoon with the head of Honda engines to inform about the team’s normal situation in this context of engine change. When asked about the number of engines already used during these tests, Eric Boullier and the head of Honda engines did not want to provide exact figures.

Daniel Ricciardo closes the day at the back with the Red Bull. The Australian driver sets his best time at 1:25.742, 2.7 seconds off Hamilton’s best time. He completed 126 laps.

Tomorrow promises to be a crucial day to prepare for the first Grand Prix of the season, in two weeks, in Australia. The weather looks even better with 20°C expected in the air in the afternoon and clear skies.

Result of the 3rd and penultimate day of private tests in Barcelona – Saturday, February 28, 2015: