Felipe Massa set the fastest time of the time on the fifth day of preseason testing, the Brazilian driver making the most of the good conditions here at the Circuit de Catalonia to log 168 laps overall for the day.
Massa's best time of 1:19.726 was almost two tenths of a second clear of his nearest rival, Red Bull Racing's Daniel Ricciardo. The Aussie driver wasn't anywhere near as busy as Massa however with only 89 laps completed by the time the session came to a close.
“It was an excellent day for the team today,” said Rod Nelson, Chief Test & Support Engineer at Williams. “We were a little on the back foot after the first test, so we modified our test programme to make up for some of the lost track time, and cover as much work as we could . We did this successfully and completed our programme on schedule. We planned for 165 laps and we've done slightly better than that with 168, so we're very happy. We got some really significant testing done today.”
Sebastian Vettel was the third fastest overall for Ferrari, the German racer also completing a total of 168 laps to finish only .006 behind Ricciardo.
Mercedes continued to share driving duties between their two racers with Lewis Hamilton finishing the faster of the two, however his running time was limited due to damage to the car.
McLaren had another woeful session despite rookie driver Stoffel Vandoorne completing a total of 80 laps, the team suffering further after issues with their Honda power unit.
“In the morning session, Stoffel started today's extremely busy testing programme,” explained Honda's Yusuke Hasegawa. “After completing 34 laps, we detected an electrical issue in our power unit, which is the same specification as last week. In the interest of maximising track time, we opted to replace it and investigate the issue further once the PU is out of the car."
"We were able to restart our session in the afternoon, and Stoffel finished 80 laps in total today. It's been another tough day, but once again the team has worked incredibly hard to get the car back out on track, and we still have three more days to gather more important data in our preparations for the start of the season.”
Tuesday's times:
- Felipe Massa Williams 1:19.726s 168 laps
- Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing 1:19.900s 89 laps
- Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1:19.906s 168 laps
- Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:20.456s 49 laps
- Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 1:20.924s 86 laps
- Esteban Ocon Force India 1:21.347s 142 laps
- Nico Hulkenberg Renault 1:21.589s 58 laps
- Kevin Magnussen Haas 1:21.676s 81 laps
- Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso 1:21.743s 83 laps
- Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren-Honda 1:22.537 80 laps
- Pascal Wehrlein Sauber 1:23.336s 47 laps
- Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1:23.630s 53 laps
- Jolyon Palmer Renault 1:24.790s 15 laps
