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Raikkonen Closes off the First Test On Top

Kimi Raikkonen closed off the final day of the first pre-season test of 2016 on top of the time sheets in the Ferrari SF16-H

The Finn set his fastest time of 1:23.477 on the Ultra Soft compound tyres late in the morning. Second fastest to Raikkonen was Daniil Kvyat in the Red Bull who was almost a second slower with a 1:24.293.

Alfonso Celis had a good day out with some solid running for Force India which put him 3rd fastest setting his time on the super softs.

Renault had a very good day with 153 laps completed with Kevin Magnussen at the wheel of the R.S.16. This sort of reliability from Renault is encouraging for the manufacturer and although they’re still down on power the driveability seems to have improved.

Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen put in another solid day of running for the Faenza based team racking up 110 laps for the day and finishing 5th fastest for the day. Felipe Nasr in the 2015 Sauber C34 was 6th fastest with 121 laps to his name.

Both Mercedes drivers were at the wheel of the W07 today with Rosberg finishing 7th fastest and Hamilton 8th. They both completed 86 and 99 laps respectively which brings the grand total of 185 laps on the day for Mercedes. Such was the reliability of the Mercedes they had to get both their drivers to keep up.

 

 

Although conceding that they would’ve liked to have done more mileage, Esteban Gutierrez had a solid day for newcomers Haas F1 with 89 laps. He’s day was cut short after his car stopped on track an hour before the end of the session.

“We had a productive day. In the morning we had a small problem which we sorted pretty quickly due to the team working well together,” said Guther Steiner the Team Principal of Haas F1.

“In the afternoon after a long run we went into pit-stop practice. We had a problem with our ECU and we stopped testing for the day but it looks promising.

“In general the first test was a fantastic four days for us, we got a lot of running in which we didn’t expect because we are a new team, we are only four days old.”

Fernando Alonso did not set a time. He had completed three installation laps until he was confined to the garage after a coolant leak. The awkward position of the leak meant that it took longer for the team to fix the problem.

 

POS Driver Team/Car Best lap Gap Laps
1 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari SF16-H 1:23.477 78
2 Daniil Kvyat Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer RB12 1:24.923 +0.816 94
3 Alfonso Celis Force India-Mercedes VJM09 1:24.840 +1.363 75
4 Kevin Magnussen Renault R.S.16 1:25.263 +1.786 153
5 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR11 1:25.393 +1.916 110
6 Felipe Nasr Sauber-Ferrari C34 1:26.053 +2.576 121
7 Nico Rosberg Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid 1:26.187 +2.71 86
8 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid 1:26.295 +2.818 99
9 Felipe Massa Williams-Mercedes FW38 1:26.483 +3.006 54
10 Esteban Gutierrez Haas-Ferrari VF-16 1:27.802 +4.325 89
11 Rio Haryanto Manor Racing-Mercedes MRT05 1:28.268 +4.789 51
12 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Honda MP4-31 No time 3

About Ritesh K Bhana

Ritesh likes to think he is a true Tifosi, but he still remains fair to other teams. He supports two other teams which are not Red Bull and McLaren. Follow Ritesh on twitter @Humanshield_1

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