Eyes are focused in Barcelona. The first two days of the second pre-season test belong to the past. What did we see or miss during these two days?

Pastor Maldonado with the new E23 Lotus surprised most of us, during the first day in Barcelona. He moved quicker than everyone else in the grid and finished in the first place with 1.25.011s using soft tyres.

McLaren and Mercedes had several problems. A faulty seal on the MGU-K forced the McLaren team to change the engine and end their first day early. Before that, Jenson Button completed 21 laps in two hours, but the problem that McLaren had didn’t let him to continue his run.

Lewis Hamilton finished his day after his 11th lap, because he had fever and the team decide to let him rest for the day. Nico Rosberg couldn’t drive for the silver arrows, his neck was injured. Hence the team had to wait until the afternoon session and call back their reserve driver Pascal Wehrlein, who had just complete 32 laps during the morning part of the test with the Force India. At the end of the day Wehrlein managed to complete 48 laps with the W06.

Sussie Wolf was driving the FW37, in the afternoon session, before the left front part of the Williams and the rear right of Felipe Nasr’s Sauber hit each other. It is still unclear, what happened on turn 5 between these two drivers. Both drivers were out for long runs.

Kimi Raikkonen completed 73 laps with the SF15-T and he was 0.156s slower than Maldonado. Scuderia Ferrari is showing that they made improvements and that they may be able to compete Mercedes. But it still unclear, because the fuel load cannot be estimated.

Day 1 Lap times:

Pastor Maldonado Lotus 1:25.011 69 Laps Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1:25.167 73 Laps Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 1:25.547 58 Laps Sergio Perez Force India 1:26.636 39 laps Felipe Nasr Sauber 1:27.307 78 Laps Max Verstappen Toro Rosso 1:27.900 93 Laps Jenson Button McLaren 1:28.182 21 Laps Pascal Wehrlein Force India 1:28.329 32 Laps Pascal Wehrlein Mercedes 1:29.489 48 Laps Susie Wolff Williams 1:28.906 83 laps Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:30.429 11 Laps

Day 2

The second day in Barcelona was totally different. The only common point between these two days was the Ferrari. Kimi Raikkonen finished second, as he did the previous day, with 1.24.584s. An improved lap compared with his first day lap time.

Daniel Ricciardo was the fastest in the second day. Red Bull’s driver finished in the first place after he completed 143 laps. He was 0.010s quicker than Kimi Raikkonen, both of them were using the soft tyres.

“It was definitely better than yesterday,” Ricciardo told.

“We’ve been trying to get a day with 100 laps and it was good we did that today.

“It’s just testing, but it’s encouraging seeing us on the top, or at least in that front group.”

During the afternoon session, Hamilton with the W06 was only 0.346s behind Ricciardo, in medium tyres, which proves that Mercedes is still in front of the other teams. As most of us believe. Mercedes and Red Bull were both on a short run.

Rosberg’s time was also satisfied, the German was 0.982s behind the Australian, and he was using the medium tyres.

Mercedes decided to let him rest after the lunch break, to fully recover from his neck injury.

Felipe Massa made a progress and placed Williams into third position (1m24.672s). The Brazilian did two short runs on soft tyres and a long run on mediums.

His time placed him ahead of Sergio Perez, who was driving the 2014 Force India and completed 121 laps. Force India’s aim was to collect data from their tyres and analyse them.

Fernando Alonso with the MP4-30 completed 59 laps and finished seventh.

“Definitely we had a better day today,” Alonso said.

We could complete some runs, we started running at 0900 and finished at 1745 which is good news finally. We could test some of the potential of the car finally and complete some laps and check many systems that we could not do before.

“Today has been a beautiful day, driving the car and exploring some of the potential. Obviously we are running with some limitations still on the engine and full power etc, but definitely the car felt better than Jerez. Every lap we do, there is a little thing on the brake balance that we need to fix, there is a little gear shift to improve, there is a temperature that goes too high, too low, so every lap is a learning process and we are enjoying it.”

Eric Boullier admitted that McLaren is 50% behind the schedule. The MGU-K issue that they had the first day didn’t let them to many laps.

It is difficult to estimate which team is currently leading. Because the teams are not publishing their fuel loads. Hence, we have to wait until the first Grand Prix in Melbourne.

Day 2 Lap times:

Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 1:24.574 143 laps Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1:24.584 90 laps Felipe Massa Williams 1:24.672 88 laps Sergio Perez Force India 1:24.702 121 laps Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:24.923 89 laps Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1:25.556 66 laps Fernando Alonso McLaren 1:25.961 59 laps Jolyon Palmer Lotus 1:26.280 77 laps Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1:27.334 113 laps Carlos Sainz Jr Toro Rosso 1:28.945 100 laps

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