Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel ended the second day of the first pre-season test in first place after snow brought an abrupt end to the session.
Vettel managed to set two consecutive fastest laps at the start of the afternoon session with his final benchmark being a 1m19.673s, which was set on the soft tyres.
A spin at Turn 1, which brought out a red flag, was the only hiccup of his day. He completed 98 laps, more than any other driver.
The Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas ended just behind the Ferrari in terms of both lap time and mileage as the Finn completed just four laps less than Vettel and was only three tenths behind the Ferrari on the slower, medium compound tyres.
Despite an early fuel leak, Red Bull managed to put in another strong day of running with Max Verstappen at the wheel. It managed 65 laps, the majority of which came in the afternoon session, and was roughly seven tenths behind the Ferrari.
The McLaren of Stoffel Vandoorne managed to beat the Red Bull by just one-thousandth of a second and was the only team to set its fastest lap on the brand new hyper-soft tyres.
However, the team didn’t run at all in the afternoon session. They told SkySports that they were doing a large set-up change, but that never materialised and so the team ended the day having only completed 37 laps.
Carlos Sainz Jr was fifth fastest for Renault ahead of the Honda-powered Toro Rosso of Pierre Gasly, who completed 82 laps.
Williams managed to grab some headlines as its reserve driver Robert Kubica took to the track in the afternoon. He edged out team-mate and morning driver Sergey Sirotkin by four-tenths and even braved the elements as he went out in the snow to rack up some mileage at the end of the session.
Esteban Ocon completed 79 laps, with the ninth quickest time, just over seconds adrift of Vettel’s benchmark.
The Sauber of Charles Leclerc took a trip into the gravel causing one of the only red flags but the Monegasque driver still managed to complete a respectable 81 laps despite the off on his debut for the Sauber team.
Haas driver Kevin Magnussen was 11th and slowest of all.
Picture courtesy of Formula 1 Twitter account.
