Max second during morning of final test day
Published on 10 March 2017 by Stefan Meens
Max Verstappen finished the morning session of the final pre-season test day in second. His 1:19.438 was eight tenths slower than Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn topped the leader boards emphasizing the Scuderia’s fine form in testing so far.
Lance Stroll (Williams) and Marcus Ericsson (Sauber) were the most productive drivers with 59 laps each on the board. Max managed 33 laps in Red Bull Racing’s RB13.
“It went reasonably well this morning”, said Max to Verstappen.nl. The team mainly focused on shorter runs. “We tried the soft compound. It felt okay. Of course there is room for improvement but we were able to run our program without any issues, which is the main thing. The practice starts went well too.”
The final morning session resembled most of the other testing days so far with Ferrari impressing, McLaren struggling with reliability and several red flags per session. Friday morning followed that pattern with Kimi Raikkonen on the pace for Ferrari and Mclaren causing two red flags as Alonso was forced to return to the pits on foot.
The other two session interruptions were caused by Romain Grosjean in the Haas F1. The Frenchman parked his car in the gravel traps and later on the track, bringing the total of red flags to four.
Pre-Season Test 2 - Circuit de Barcelona-Cataluyna - Friday 10 March 2017
RESULTS DAY 4 - MORNING 1. Raikkonen Ferrari 1:18.634 48 2. Verstappen Red Bull Racing 1:19.438 +0.804 33 3. Sainz Toro Rosso 1:19.837 +1.203 39 4. Bottas Mercedes 1:19.845 +1.211 53 5. Hülkenberg Renault 1:19.885 +1.251 45 6. Perez Force India 1:20.116 +1.482 46 7. Stroll Williams 1:20.335 +1.701 59 8. Grosje an Haas 1:21.429 +2.795 43 9. Ericsson Sauber 1:21.670 +3.036 59 10. Alonso McLaren 1:22.731 +4.097 19