Bottas sets the fastest time of 2017 so far, with Mercedes once again topping the times. Meanwhile, Raikkonen crashed his Ferrari – ending his running for the day. McLaren had another tough day, completing just 46 laps and ending up over two seconds off the pace.
Red Bull driver Verstappen had a disappointing day, losing time when the team had to switch his Renault power unit. Then, when on a race-sim, he stopped out on track with another issue. Despite this, he finished the day fourth – less than a tenth off Kimi Raikkonen, who was the fastest driver on the soft tyres.
Williams were again looking strong, with Massa fastest of all in the morning. Surpassed by Bottas in the afternoon, he dropped to second but was only one tenth off the Mercedes (although on faster tyres). Stroll ran in the afternoon, finally completing a session without an incident and racked up 59 laps and finished the day in 5th, two tenths quicker than Hamilton.
Bottas’ lap today is quicker than the fastest pole lap on this configuration of the Catalunya circuit and almost 3 seconds less than the pole time The new regulation changes have certainly brought with them the promised performance gains, although whether they improve the racing itself will not be answered until the first race – now less than three weeks away!
Fastest times of the day:
- Bottas – 1:19.310 (supersoft)
- Massa – 1:19.420 (ultrasoft)
- Raikkonen – 1:20.406 (soft)
- Verstappen – 1:20.432 (soft)
- Stroll – 1:20.579 (supersoft)
- Hamilton – 1:20.702 (soft)
- Hulkenberg – 1:21.213 (supersoft)
- Perez – 1:21.297 (supersoft)
- Sainz – 1:21.872 (soft)
- Grosjean – 1:21.887 (ultrasoft)
- Wehrlein – 1:23.000 (soft)
- Alonso – 1:23.041 (soft)
- Ericsson – 1:23.384 (soft)
- Palmer – 1:26.462 (supersoft)