Massa fastest on first day of second test at Barcelona

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

The second week of testing kicked off at Barcelona, with Red Bull Racing notably showing signs of true pace after having kept a low profile in the first 4 days of testing. McLaren are also of note as they started the day with decent early mileage.

At Sauber, Pascal Wehrlein is in the car, having had to sit out the first week due to back problems. He did however have a very quiet morning, as his Sauber didn't go anywhere but stay on the blocks in the garage. Mechanics were quite busy in the engine bay to resolve an apparent power unit issue.

Stoffel Vandoorne did get off to good start in the McLaren MCL32 today, out early and immediately completing a 9-lap stint after his installation lap. Smiles in the McLaren garage suggest things were going as expected, even though the team admitted they are behind schedule and performance following last week's woes.

Mercedes and Ferrari meanwhile kept themselves busy with slightly longer runs, Ferrari at one moment using an unmarked Pirelli prototype medium tyre. Hamilton focused mainly on the soft tyres.

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Renault on the other hand experienced a bit of a scruffy morning, including several stoppages to perform work on the car. At 10:00, Palmer stopped in the pitlane to get his mechanics man-power him back into his pitbox. The team described the issues as "teething problems" and were mostly quickly back on track.

Past 11 o'clock, Williams upped the pace with Felipe Massa first going second fastest on the soft tyres, before going outright fastest around 12:15 using the super soft tyres, going round Circuit de Catalunya in 1m19.726s.

While Sebastian Vettel also continued to improve his own best on mediums, Daniel Ricciardo improved his own time yet again, down to 1m19.900s on the ultra softs.

Further back, Stoffel Vandoorne was a lot less present on track than in the first hour, suggesting another issue. At Sauber, they finally got their C36 running, starting Wehrlein off onto a few 1m30s laps before improving to 1m23.336s, pushing the halted Renault down to slowest of the morning session.

Early in the afternoon, McLaren confirmed it was changing the power unit in the MCL32 for the sixth time in the 5 days of testing thus far. Still, later in the afternoon, Vandoorne returned to the track and ended the day with a respectable 80 laps on the chart.

At Renault, where the power unit also had to be changed, Hulkenberg took over from Palmer and completed 57 laps.

The best times from the morning session didn't get improved, as teams focused on longer runs in the afternoon. Williams and Ferrari ran incredibly reliably, both ending the day having completed 168 laps. Esteban Ocon in the Force India did 142 laps while at Mercedes, the drivers shared the work, totalling 135 laps for the Mercedes AMG F1 W08. The team had some issues with the floor of the car, limiting Hamilton's mileage in the morning.