Rosberg quickest as Mercedes up their pace in Spain

Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg set the pace on Tuesday, as this week’s final pre-season test got underway at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Rosberg’s best time of 1m 23.022s, set on soft tyres, put him two-tenths clear of Williams’ Valtteri Bottas - who clocked his best lap on Pirelli’s ultrasoft compound.

It was the first time Mercedes have run the soft rubber, the world champions having used only mediums and hards in last week’s opening test. And it was another busy day for the Silver Arrows, with Rosberg notching up 82 laps in the morning and Lewis Hamilton another 90 as he completed a race simulation in the afternoon.

Fernando Alonso brought out the red flags just before lunch when his McLaren stopped on track, but the team bounced back in the afternoon, with the Spaniard totalling 93 laps en route to a highly encouraging third in the times.

Just behind Alonso was Kimi Raikkonen, who spent much of the afternoon in the Ferrari garage thanks to technical problems, and Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat who also lost track time thanks to a brake problem which caused a small fire on his RB12.

It was also a frustrating day for newcomers Haas, who were forced to abandon their programme early thanks to a fuel system problem which left Esteban Gutierrez 11th in the times on just 23 laps.

By contrast, Toro Rosso and Force India enjoyed excellent reliability, with Max Verstappen completing a mammoth 144 laps in his newly race-liveried STR11 and Nico Hulkenberg 121 in his VJM09.

They finished seventh and eighth respectively, just ahead of Felipe Nasr who gave Sauber's 2016 machine, the C35, a solid debut as he racked up 103 laps.

 

Tuesday's unofficial testing times from Barcelona

POS	Driver	Team/Car	Best lap	Gap	Laps
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid	1:23.022		82
2	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Mercedes FW38	1:23.229	0.207	123
3	Fernando Alonso	McLaren-Honda MP4-31	1:24.735	1.713	93
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari SF16-H	1:24.836	1.814	72
5	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer RB12	1:25.049	2.027	69
6	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid	1:25.051	2.029	90
7	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR11	1:25.176	2.154	144
8	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes VJM09	1:25.336	2.314	121
9	Felipe Nasr	Sauber-Ferrari C35	1:25.493	2.471	103
10	Kevin Magnussen	Renault R.S.16	1:25.760	2.738	119
11	Esteban Gutierrez	Haas-Ferrari VF-16	1:26.661	3.639	23
12	Rio Haryanto	Manor Racing-Ferrari MRT05	1:27.625	4.603	45