Rosberg goes fastest at Barcelona

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

Day 2 of this test week has started with Sebastian Vettel the first man out on track for Ferrari, followed by Nico Rosberg, Pastor Maldonado and Max Verstappen.

The start of the day appeared to be an ideal opportunity for aerodynamic verification with Felipe Nasr in the Sauber running with different colours of flowviz paint on each side of the monocoque. Red Bull, Williams and Ferrari ran with extensive rakes, similarly doing aerodynamic evaluation.

Nothing special happened later before lunch, with McLaren also getting some troublefree laps done with Button in the cockpit.

At 12:25 however, Force India finally managed to get its new VJM08 ready, allowing Hulkenberg to complete an installation lap. With its on track debut, Force India has become the final team to reveal its new car, even though Marussia may still end up being present at Melbourne with a yet unseen 2015 Formula One car.

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Nasr, Vettel, Maldonado and Verstappen all proved very busy in the afternoon, each lapping considerably more than 100 laps. Nico Hulkenberg in the Force India also appeared to enjoy some solid runs, even though their performance is not yet level with the other teams that have been running their cars for the last 9 days of testing. His longer run on hard tyres consisted of a 1:31.0, 1:31.0, 1:31.2, 1:31.6, 1:31.8, 1:31.7, 1:32.0, 1:32.4, 1:32.4, 1:32.4 and 1:32.7.

Jenson Button in the McLaren on the other hand managed to do several longer runs as well, encountering none of the show stopping problems that plagued the team in earlier days, until 20 minutes before the end, when he had to park the car at turn 7.

Also running troublefree today are Mercedes AMG F1, with Rosberg eventually putting on the softs to record a 1:22.792, by far the best time yet this winter at Barcelona.

Little past 17:00, the fun is over for Verstappen. The young Dutchman returned to the pits to end the day one hour early due to an electrical problem. Still, Toro Rosso will likely be pleased with completing 139 laps on a single day.

The third and final red flag of the day was caused by Pastor Maldonado, just 5 minutes from the official end of the session. He Venezuelan came a halt at the pit entry, likely as the team was testing to see when they'd run out of fuel.

At the end of the test day, Nico Rosberg had the fastest lap time (1:22.792) on the medium tyre. The German was followed by Bottas (1:23.995) and Nasr (1:24.071).