Valtteri Bottas closed off Williams’ pre-season testing campaign by finishing fastest on the final day of the Barcelona test on the super soft compound in the morning session.
Bottas’ time of 1:23.063 was 0.406s faster than Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari who finished 2nd fastest. In fact, Williams felt very confident of their testing performance and ended their testing early with 89 laps on the board for the day.
“It was a really good day and a great way to finish the test,” commented Bottas. “One of the main points we have learnt is that the FW37 is very reliable. The car we are taking to Melbourne is very competitive and should make for an interesting start to the season.”
Most of the teams, after completing qualifying simulations moved over to long runs in preparation for the first race of the Formula 1 World Championship in Melbourne in two weeks time.
Felipe Nasr with 159 laps for the day finished 3rd fastest with rookie Max Verstappen in the Toro Rosso finishing 4th fastest. Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull suffered and ERS problem in the morning session which meant he was out for the bulk of the morning session. He was back out in the afternoon and managed to complete 72 laps.
Sergio Perez got his first taste of the VJM08 on Sunday. He completed 130 laps and finished 6th fastest. ““My first day in the car has been a good one, with a very high number of laps and a good atmosphere in the team,” said Perez. “It’s no secret that we have some catch-up to do but I am optimistic: the team has a clear direction to work towards and we have been able to collect a large amount of data in such a short time, which will help all those working back at base.”
Nico Rosberg closed off a very successful testing campaign for Mercedes with the 7th fastest time of the day. Although he was not up there in terms of pace for the day, Rosberg holds the honor for the fastest lap of the Barcelona test of 1:22.792. Mercedes have also completed the most laps across all three tests.
“Today was a good day and, overall, that was a very interesting test here in Barcelona,” commented Rosberg. ” After this test, though, we can be happy,. The team did a fantastic job.”
Rosberg seemed confident of Mercedes’ pace and feel that they will pick up right where they left off in 2014.
McLaren had another difficult day with Jenson Button at the wheel. Their test campaign has been hit by reliability issues from the first day of testing. The team, however, are optimistic that they can improve, although conceding that the fly away races will be an uphill battle.
Eric Boullier, McLaren’s Racing Director had this to say about their testing campaign: “Looking back at the last four weeks, our winter test programme has been difficult. However, that wasn’t entirely unexpected: this time last year, we saw many teams in a similar situation when they introduced new power units for the first time. This year, we also had the added complexity that very tight packaging brings.
“In overview, the lack of mileage means we won’t be as ready as we’d have liked, but we can take away the positive that all the running and data gathering we’ve done have confirmed that we’re achieving the targets we set ourselves.
“Even if it’s likely to be a difficult start to the season, we know we can develop hard and fast, and that we’ll surely unlock the huge potential that lies within the McLaren-Honda MP4-30.”
Lotus’ Pastor Maldonado closed off the time sheet with the 9th fastest time of the day. He brought out the red flags when he crashed into the barriers at Turn 4. Lotus say that the crash was caused by a “systems issue compromised Maldonado’s braking”. The team were unable to repair the damage to Maldonado’s car and had to call things to an early end at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Below is the unofficial times for day 4 of the final pre-season test in Barcelona
