DAY THREE OVERVIEW

Date Thursday 8 March 2018 Driver Stoffel Vandoorne Location Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya (4.655km/2.892 miles) Laps/km/miles 151/703km/437miles Best laptime 1:18.855s

PROGRAMME

A productive and valuable day of running for the whole McLaren team on the penultimate day of the final pre-season test.

In the morning session, Stoffel completed 48 laps, focusing on set-up work, aero development and setting changes to arm the team with as much information as possible about the behaviour of the new MCL33 package.

After lunch, and a few more development runs, the team performed a full race simulation – made even more realistic by a brief interruption from a red flag – and concluded the day having run a full and comprehensive test programme.

Stoffel completed 151 laps and set the sixth-fastest time of the day.

STOFFEL VANDOORNE, McLaren Driver

“Today was a very positive day for us and we completed a lot of laps. This morning was good – we went through a lot of set-up work, understanding about the tyre compounds, and did a lot of learning that we’d missed at the start of this week and also last week because of the bad weather conditions.

“This afternoon we completed a full race distance, which went smoothly and was good to get under our belt, to get a feel for the car in race conditions, and go through the different tyre variations. The feeling in the car from the beginning has been very positive, and today’s running has confirmed that feeling.

“Obviously, there are a few areas we know we need to work on, and our car in Melbourne will be quite different as there are a lot of updates coming. It’s important now that everything we’ve learned here we carry forward.

“Today was very productive and it gives us the confidence to go to Melbourne with a strong package. It was also my last day in the car and now I’m looking forward to going racing. I feel 100 per cent ready.”

ERIC BOULLIER, Racing Director

“Today was a very positive day for the whole team. We completed a significant amount of mileage and also achieved a solid amount of work on our test programme ‘wish-list’.

“As we near the end of our allocated eight test days, it’s very satisfying that we were able to turn our attention to race simulations and longer runs, which all help towards preparing our package as comprehensively as possible ahead of the first race of the season and beyond.

“We also completed a number of further useful development and correlation tests which have been a very valuable portion of our test programme today. We’re still learning a lot, and every lap we do is extra useful data for our armoury. Now we hope to round off the test with a solid final day tomorrow for Fernando and complete our pre-season preparations before Melbourne.”

TODAY'S OFFICIAL TESTING TIMES

1 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1:17.182s 188 laps 2 Kevin Magnussen Haas 1:18.360s 153 laps 3 Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso 1:18.363s 169 laps 4 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 1:18.675s 79 laps 5 Carlos Sainz Renault 1:18.725s 69 laps 6 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren 1:18.855s 151 laps 7 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1:18.244s 148 laps 8 Lewis Hamilton Merecedes 1:19.296s 84 laps 9 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 1:19.532s 97 laps 10 Robert Kubica Williams 1:19.629s 73 laps 11 Sergio Perez Force India 1:19.634s 159 laps 12 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:19.842s 187 laps 13 Lance Stroll Williams 1:20.262s 67 laps

WHAT'S NEXT?

Fernando returns to the cockpit tomorrow for the last of eight days of pre-season testing.

TEST DATES

Four days (Tuesday 6 March – Friday 9 March).



