Wednesday 9 April 2014

Hamilton ends Bahrain test fastest

(Mercedes AMG F1 Team)
 
Mercedes Lewis Hamilton picked up where his team mate Nico Rosberg left off by setting the fastest time of the day as the first in-season test finished up at the Bahrain International Circuit. The Englishman, who won Sunday's race in Bahrain set a time of 1m 34.136s to end the fay just ahead of Toro Rosso's Jean Eric Vergne The 2008 world champion completed 120 laps for the Brackley based outfit.
 
For his part Vergne completed 63 laps ending the test just ahead of McLaren's Kevin Magnussen who managed 26 laps for the Woking based team and set a fastest time of 1m 36.203s and was just rahead of Sergio Perez in the Force India who was one of the star's of Sunday's sensational Bahrain Grand Prix after finishing the race in third place.
 
Daniel Ricciardo put in a solid performance for Red Bull Racing as the Australian completed 65 lap's on his way to 5th on the timesheets. Marussia's Jules Bianchi put in the stand out performance as he completed 93 laps and ended the test in 6th place for the Banbury based squad who reclaimed 10th place in the Constructors standing's at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
 
The Sauber F1 Team's test and reserve driver Giedo Van Der Garde set the seventh fastest time after taking over testing duties form the team's rookie driver Sergey Siroktin who is set to gain his mandatory FIA Super Licence.
 
Ferrari's Fernando Alonso was eighth fastest and could only manage to complete 12 lap's after Ferrari discovered that the chassis that was being used by the Spaniard had sustained more damage then expected following Kimi Raikkonen's trip over the kerbs on Friday during practice. A team spokesperson said:
 
'The kerb impact in FP1 caused some local damage which we repaired during the weekend, but it has now become clear that there was also some consequential damage, unseen over the remainder of the weekend'
 
The spokesperson went on to say:
 
'This damage became only apparent this morning, and we stopped running on a precautionary basis in order to fix the chassis'
 
Caterham's Marcus Ericsson was 9th fastest for the Leafield based team while Williams Martini Racing's Felipe Nasr finished the day in 10th place while the Lotus F1 Team's problematic start to the season continued as Romain Grosjean ended the day at the bottom of the timesheet's having completed 16 laps.
 
The team's will be back in action next Friday when practice gets underway in Shanghai ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix.
 
©Ben Johnston 2014

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