Williams and McLaren bounce back on 5th day of testing

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

The first day of the second pre-season test at Barcelona has brought some encouraging results to several teams, even though Mercedes has proved by using Pirelli's soft tyres that it is likely still ahead of the rest of the pack.

The German team once again split driving duties among Rosberg in the morning and Hamilton in the afternoon. In total, they amassed another 172 laps without any hiccups at all. Rosberg's time on the soft tyre also proved fastest so far on that compound, and just 2 tenths down on Vettel's lap from last week, using the ultra softs.

Valtteri Bottas meanwhile made it a very, very positive day of testing for Williams, edging very close to Nico Rosberg and completing a considerable amount of laps. Quite a motivator for the Williams team after they had sort of a low key first week of testing.

Fernando Alonso probably also felt some relief, having been able to record 89 laps, contrary to the three he managed last Thursday. The performance of the car also appeared to steadily improve, as the team worked on engine mappings while using a new fuel from Esso, which Team Principal Eric Boullier claimed to be worth "a double digit gain in bhp".

At Ferrari things were perhaps a little bit less positive, as Raikkonen was sidelined for several hours in the afternoon following a gearbox glitch. The Finn found himself stuck in 8th gear at the end of the straight, subsequently parking his car to be collected by the marshalls during a red flag period.

...

Daniil Kvyat also had his share of problems with his Red Bull RB12, encountering a rear brake fire that took the team until around 3:00 in the afternoon to get sorted. Coincidentally, this was also the time when Christian Horner and Adrian Newey arrived at the track to follow up on testing.

Renault with Magnussen also had a positive day, although they caused a red flag 2 minutes before the planned end of the session, following an on-track stoppage.

Haas on the other hand found their first real reliability problem so far in testing, as they saw an early end to their day with a fuel system problem. A similar story for Manor, although their oil leak was in the morning. Once on track though, Haryanto proved considerably slower than Gutierrez.