Posted on 1st February 2015
At the first pre-season test of the 2015 Formula One season, Sebastian Vettel topped the first day of 2015 Formula 1 testing at Jerez on Sunday.
The four-time F1 world champion first moved to the top of the times in the afternoon with a short run, returning to the track after a long delay caused by telemetry problem on the SF15. Vettel's lap time was 1.22.620 and was ahead of Sauber's new signing Marcus Ericsson was in second place who closed to within less than a tenth of a second of that benchmark set by Vettel in the SF15-T on a soft-tyre run later in the afternoon. However, Vettel went quicker again on a set of mediums in the final 20 minutes of the day when the quickest lap time of the session was set.
Nico Rosberg was third place overall but had led the way for the Mercedes team for much of the day before Vettel’s quick laps were set and the F1 W06 comfortably completed the most laps on the first day. By the end of the day, Rosberg had notched up 157 laps and managed to complete several long runs during the day. Meanwhile, the next highest total came from Ericsson and Williams’s Valtteri Bottas with 73 laps each respectedly.
The Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo spent the morning as Rosberg’s closest challenger, but his morning running was brought to a smoky halt. But the RB11 did return to action later in the day, but by the chequered flag the RB11 had only completed 35 laps.
This was due to the fact that Ricciardo's running in the session was curtailed by a battery problem that overheated the rear brakes. But nevertheless, Ricciardo despite everything that he encountered today managed to finish the session in fourth place.
The laps that Ricciardo managed to complete was nothing compared to McLaren-Honda and their driver Fernando Alonso. With the lowest amount of laps completed on the first day of testing in Jerez, only six laps where completed by Alonso which is not what many were expecting from the team at all. Alonso's six laps today were broken up into three installation laps and was followed by a three-lap run that included the only timed lap set by the MP4-30 all day to finish the day in seventh place.
While Williams recovered from a late start to log 73 laps with Bottas and managed to finish the session in fifth place ahead of Carlos Sainz Jr in sixth and Fernando Alonso in sixth place, the Lotus E23 failed to appear on track at all as it spent the day in transit from the team’s Enstone factory and it is believed that the E23 should be run for the remainder of the test starting tomorrow if everything goes well.
The day was only affected by two red flags. The first red flag was when Ericsson spun in the morning and the second late in the afternoon when Carlos Sainz Jr stopped on the backstraight in the Toro Rosso.
Day One Timesheet:-
Driver. Car. Time. Gap. Laps
1. Sebastian Vettel. Ferrari. 1m22.620s. 59
2 Marcus Ericsson. Sauber/Ferrari. 1m22.777. 0.157s. 73
3. Nico Rosberg. Mercedes. 1m23.106s. 0.486s. 157
4. Daniel Ricciardo. Red Bull/Renault 1m23.338s 0.718s 35
5 Valtteri Bottas. Williams/Mercedes. 1m23.906s 1.286s 72
6 Carlos Sainz Jr. Toro Rosso/Renault 1m25.327s 2.707s 46
7 Fernando Alonso McLaren/Honda 1m40.738s 18.118s 6
