Rosberg ends first Bahrain test on top

F1 Test, Bahrain, Bahrain International Circuit

The final day of the first week of testing at Bahrain got underway with Marcus Ericsson, giving the Caterham CT05 its shakedown with everyone else still in the garage.

He was however soon followed by most other teams.

The first red flag of the day was then caused by the same Marcus Ericsson as he stopped the Caterham along the track. The young Swede is in the cockpit until noon as the team adapted the plan to give him some more time in the car. However, with car trouble, this might become difficult.

Lotus meanwhile were not seen in the first 90 minutes of the test as the team was hard at work replacing gearbox parts with new elements flown over from the team's headquarters in Enstone. Yesterday, Lotus struggled with that gearbox, repeatedly bringing Maldonado out only to see him stop a few corners down the road.

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At Williams it's Felipe Nasr in the car following the official confirmation of him becoming the team's official reserve driver. 90 minutes later, he completed 15 laps, the best of which in 1:39.129.

The early pace however is again set by Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes F1 W05, setting the best time of the week so far with 1:33.283.

By noon, Jenson Button became second fastest, albeit still 1.6s off Nico Rosberg's best lap. Kimi Raikkonen is third fastest, 3 seconds down, followed by Nasr who already completed 53 laps for Williams.

Toro Rosso managed to complete only 6 laps with Vergne in the first half of the day, Ericsson just 4 and Bianchi 2. Adrian Sutil didn't come out as Sauber were working on installing a new chassis after problems were found with the first monocoque.

Later on on the day, Nico Rosberg completed a race simulation, seemingly without any issues. Jenson Button went second fastest without improvements in the afternoon, as he also focused on longer runs.

At Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen completed a solid number of laps as well, but close before the end of the session he crashed off, nose first into the barriers. The Finn stepped out unharmed, but the crash effectively meant an early end of today's testing at Bahrain.