Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo finished the opening day of Formula 1 pre-season testing at the top of the timesheet, with Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas in second.
Cooler conditions in the afternoon, which caused track temperatures to plummet to as low as eight degrees, meant that the morning featured the most mileage as well as the fastest times.
Ricciardo’s benchmark of 1m20.179s was set on the medium compound tyres five minutes before the lunch-break. He edged out Bottas by less than two tenths at the interval.
The conditions in the afternoon served to safeguard Ricciardo’s position at the top of the timesheet, as low track temperatures hampered running. During one run, Ricciardo opted to use intermediate tyres on a dry track, with tyre warm-up proving to be a huge challenge.
Despite rain arriving for the final 30 minutes of the session, Red Bull reached a century of laps for the day with Ricciardo recording 105 laps.
It is the first time in the V6 hybrid era that Red Bull has managed to surpass 100 laps on the opening day of testing.
Mercedes joined Renault and Williams in running split programmes, with Bottas handing the W09 to his team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the afternoon. With conditions deteriorating, Hamilton ended the day seventh on the timesheet, clocking just 25 laps compared with Bottas’ 58.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg finished third and fourth respectively, having exchanged fastest laps during the morning.
Renault clocked a total of 99 laps on day one, with Hulkenberg recording 73 in the morning before Carlos Sainz Jr added 26 in the afternoon. Hulkenberg stated that his morning was ‘promising’ after the team avoided the type of reliability issues which hindered its 2017 preparation.
Fernando Alonso finished fifth on a difficult opening day for McLaren. After four laps Alonso suffered a right-rear wheel-nut failure, sending him into the gravel trap at the final corner.
The resultant investigation and repair caused McLaren to lose three hours of running before lunch. Missing the best of the conditions, Alonso stretched the team’s mileage in the afternoon to a total of 51 laps for the day.
Conversely, Toro Rosso recorded a trouble-free first day with Honda power. Brendon Hartley finished eighth on the timesheet recording 93 laps.
Lance Stroll finished ninth for Williams. Stroll drove the FW41 in the morning, before handing over to rookie team-mate Sergey Sirotkin in the afternoon. Sirotkin failed to set a representative lap time in the deteriorating conditions.
Haas and Sauber were largely anonymous en route to 10th and 11th respectively.
Force India’s lap total was limited to just 22 laps. The team’s development driver Nitika Mazepin suffered a spin into the gravel at Turn 4 in the morning before sensor issues kept the team in the garage throughout much of the afternoon.
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