Valtteri Bottas edged out former Williams teammate Felipe Massa to lead day two of Formula 1’s second pre-season test in Barcelona.
Bottas posted the quickest overall time during the first week of running at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, but was able to go faster still on Wednesday as times edged towards the circuit’s lap record.
Bottas recorded a best lap of 1:19.310 on the super-soft tire to finish one-tenth of a second clear of Massa at the top of the timesheets, having spent the morning behind the wheel of the Mercedes W08 car.
Teammate Lewis Hamilton took over in the afternoon and focused on long runs, ending up sixth overall in the final classification.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen wound up third, but was forced to cut his day short after crashing at Turn 3 in the afternoon, denting the Scuderia’s erstwhile-impressive run of reliability through pre-season.
Max Verstappen was fourth for Red Bull, but he too hit trouble in the afternoon, his RB13 car stopping out on-track with around 15 minutes left in the day.
Williams rookie Lance Stroll returned to the cockpit after a tough first week that saw him crash a number of times, and had a trouble-free day en route to fifth place overall. Nico Hulkenberg followed behind Hamilton in P7, with Sergio Perez eighth for Force India.
Romain Grosjean completed close to 100 laps for Haas, finishing the day ninth in the timesheets ahead of Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz Jr. Pascal Wehrlein and Marcus Ericsson split running for Sauber once again, finishing 11th and 13th respectively, with McLaren’s Fernando Alonso squeezing between the two. Jolyon Palmer propped up the timesheets for Renault in 14th.
