Posted on 2nd March 2017
This evening Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen’ led the way during the fourth and final day of the opening test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in a wet-dry session ahead of Max Verstappen and Jolyon Palmer.
With Pirelli artificially spraying the track wet for today's session in order to get more data on their wet and intermediate tyres despite Barcelona being sunny; this left many F1 fans including myself wondering why they've spent all that time and energy to do that when it appears nothing substantial has been gained apart from Pirelli announcing earlier this afternoon that the wet weather tyres will be adapted for the Chinese GP.
Despite this, Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton did not run as scheduled in the morning as Mercedes ran into their first mechanical trouble of the winter, as an electrical fault kept the W08 in the garage for several hours.
Once the problem was fixed late in the morning, Hamilton decided to give what was left of the session over to Valtteri Bottas with him due in the car for the afternoon in any case and still the Mercedes team ended the week with the quickest overall time and the most number of laps completed.
It was also a difficult day for Toro Rosso, with Daniil Kvyat completing a single installation lap before problems were detected in its Renault engine. The power unit change took the entire day, keeping the striking blue, silver and red car in the garage until the chequered flag fell at 1800 local time.
The Williams team did not feature in the day’s running at all due to damage sustained in Lance Stroll’s heavy crash on Wednesday, with the team withdrawing before proceedings began to prepare its back-up chassis for next week.
But it was Valtteri Bottas who was fastest on the fourth and final day of the first F1 pre-season test with a stunning lap time of 1.20.872 and completed 91 laps. Even though Raikkonen was just over a second down on his team mate Sebastian Vettel's best lap time of the week, it is still a promising start for the Italian team.
Raikkonen finished ahead of Max Verstappen in second place and ahead of Jolyon Palmer in third place. Romain Grosjean finished in fourth place with the most laps of any one today with117 laps ahead of Antonio Giovinazzi who impressed his way to fifth place, Sergio Perez in sixth place and Stoffel Vandoorne in seventh place.
As we head further down the grid, Valtteri Bottas finished the session in eighth place ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in ninth place and Danill Kvyat in tenth place.
Day Four Timesheet
1) Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 1:20.872, 91 laps
2) Max Verstappen, Red Bull, 1:21.769, 85 laps
3) Jolyon Palmer, Renault, 1:21.778, 39 laps
4) Romain Grosjean, Haas, 1:22.309, 117 laps
5) Antonio Giovinazzi, Sauber, 1:22.401, 84 laps
6) Sergio Perez, Force India, 1:22.534, 80 laps
7) Stoffel Vandoorne, McLaren, 1:22.576, 65 laps
8) Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, 1:23.443, 68 laps
9) Nico Hulkenberg, Renault, 1:24.974, 51 laps
10) Daniil Kvyat, Toro Rosso, No Time, 1 lap
Keep your eyes peeled at Driving For Pleasure as we will be covering all the days of the second pre-season F1 test at Barcelona with our daily reports next week alongside the latest F1 news.
Sarah Jones- @jonesy_laaa
