Rosberg tops first testing day at Bahrain

F1 Test, Bahrain, Bahrain International Circuit

Nico Rosberg topped the times today as the first two day in-season tests kicked off at Bahrain. Similar as in this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix, the second fastest was Force India, today driven by German Nico Hulkenberg.

Rosberg enjoyed a trouble free day at the wheel of the Mercedes AMG F1 W05, completing a total of 121 laps and comfortably setting the fastest time on his 102nd lap of the day. He thereby went more than three tenths quicker than Nico Hulkenberg and nearly a second faster than Ferrari's Fernando Alonso.

The Spaniard, who will be driving the Ferrari F14 T again tomorrow, was also undertaking aerodynamic evaluation work for his team, often seen cruising at constant speed along the main straight, effectively simulating a real world wind tunnel. Ferrari said they were optimising and trying out various electronic settings as it widely believed that its MGU-H energy recovery, and the moments it is operating is one of the main deficits that Ferrari currently have. On top of course of them being overweight.

Williams meanwhile also ran without issues, with the team doing "a good mixture of aero, mechanical, car set-up, electronics and power unit". Driver Valtteri Bottas noted conditioned were different from the race weekend, but the reduced wind made it more useful for aerodynamic validation.

The least amount of laps was completed by Lotus as Maldonado's Lotus E22 suffered lots of reliability issues, despite having completed the entire race distance at the Bahrain GP, just two days ago. Caterham meanwhile were also in trouble, finding a hydraulic leak around midday and opting to bow out of the session as it would have simply taken too much time to repair the car after getting the floor and the gearbox off. The team completed 63 laps on Pirelli's 2015 development tyres.

Testing continues tomorrow at Bahrain for one more day, before teams leave for the Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai. Then it will be Williams that will complete its day in the tyre development programme for Pirelli.