Nico Rosberg beats soft-tyre Williams' benchmark by seven tenths as W06 shows pace and reliability; McLaren reach century of laps before late breakdown; Force India finally debut 2015 car
Monday 16 March 2015 14:24, UK
Mercedes finally topped a testing timesheet for the first time in 2015 as the world champions displayed an ominous turn of speed to shatter the fastest time seen at Barcelona this winter.
While the pace of the sleek W06 had not been in doubt up until Day Two of the final test, the fact the team had exclusively run on the slower medium and hard compounds meant that neither Nico Rosberg nor Lewis Hamilton had truly lit up a timesheet in the opening nine days of pre-season action.
However, that all changed on Friday afternoon at the Circuit de Catalunya as for the first time Mercedes bolted the quicker soft tyres onto the W06 and Rosberg immediately clocked a blistering 1:22.792 time – a lap which was 0.7s quicker than the previous best set by Williams’ Felipe Massa on the same compound the day before.
With Rosberg also adding a similarly-impressive 1:22.8 soon after, and the car once more completing more than 100 laps during the test day, Mercedes have emphatically confirmed their status as the team to beat heading into the new season with two days of pre-season testing to run.
"They've been running relatively conservatively throughout the testing, but have obviously just started to wind it up a bit and you can see the performance gap is pretty ominous," Red Bull boss Christian Horner told Sky Sports News HQ. "Everyone looks pretty tight behind them, but they seem to have quite a gap at the moment."
Despite the apparent evidence of the timesheet, Rosberg attempted to play down Mercedes' advantage: "We are confident that we have a good car because we have a great team at the moment, but at the same time we are also well aware that the others have been posting some quick times and keep working. Today was a difficult day because even though all the numbers looked like they were in the right place in the set up, actually the set up was very, very far away from where it needed to be and we don’t really understand that."
McLaren-Honda, meanwhile, remain a world away from such staggering laptimes for now but the revived partnership appeared to finally make a breakthrough with their MP4-30 on its 10th day of testing as the team reached a century of laps for the first time.
Just one day after a hydraulics fault limited Jenson Button’s mileage to a mere seven tours, the Briton was out on track within minutes of the green flag on Day Two and steadily and consistency worked his way up to 100 laps before the MP4-30 eventually ground to a halt on its 101st tour inside the final 20 minutes.
Still, despite that late setback, the sudden step forward in reliability will provide huge encouragement to McLaren. Indeed, Button, on the soft tyres, also bettered team-mate Fernando Alonso’s fastest time from the first test by half a second, with his 1:25.590 effort good enough for fifth place on the timesheet.
With McLaren moving beyond 300 laps for the winter, Force India now prop up the 2015 mileage charts, although their VJM08 only made its debut on Friday following a delayed gestation period.
Having been fired up for the first time at their Silverstone factory earlier in the week, the VJM08 took to the track just past midday local time after being built up in the garage and thereafter enjoyed impressive reliability straight out of the box as Nico Hulkenberg completed more than 70 laps.
Overall it was an impressive day for mileage across the nine-car field, with Rosberg and Button among six drivers to complete more than 100 laps during the eight hours of running in bright and sunny conditions.
While third-placed Sauber completed a race simulation for the second successive day, this time with Felipe Nasr, their engine suppliers Ferrari topped the lap charts with 143 as Sebastian Vettel enjoyed a trouble-free session in the SF15-T.
Despite both Renault-powered Red Bull teams logging healthy mileage themselves, both ran into afternoon reliability gremlins as Max Verstappen's Toro Rosso first stopped with an electrical fault and Daniil Kvyat's Red Bull then ground to a halt at Turn One after a hydraulic sensor alert.
Barcelona Test Two, Day Two timesheet
1) Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, 1:22.792, 106 laps
2) Valtteri Bottas, Williams, 1:23.995, 90 laps
3) Felipe Nasr, Sauber, 1:24.071, 141 laps
4) Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, 1:25.339, 143 laps
5) Jenson Button, McLaren, 1:25.590, 101 laps
6) Pastor Maldonado, Lotus, 1:26.705, 140 laps
7) Max Verstappen, Toro Rosso, 1:26.766, 139 laps
8) Daniil Kvyat, Red Bull, 1:26.965, 84 laps
9) Nico Hulkenberg, Force India, 1:29.847, 73 laps
