Rosberg leads the way for Mercedes as the first Bahrain test comes to an end

(Mercedes AMG F1)

 

The Mercedes AMG F1 Team certainly seem to be the outfit to beat as for the second day running one of their cars topped the timesheets. Nico Rosberg completed 89 laps for the Brackley based team before he was forced to end his day early late in the afternoon. The German set the benchmark time of 1m 33.283s and with his team mate already being tipped to take the win at the first race in Australia the team can be extremely happy with their progress this week as Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg completed a combined total of 313 laps over the four days in Bahrain.

 

Another team who can be very happy with their progress is McLaren and the new Racing Director Eric Boullier who made his debut for the Woking based outfit this week. Jenson Button finished the final day un 2nd place 1.6 seconds behind Rosberg. Button completed 66 laps today and in doing so brought his tally up to 168 over two day's.

 

Kimi Raikkonen, who suffered telemetry issues yesterday had a more positive final day as he finished in third place and completed 81 laps for the Prancing Horse. He brought out the red flags just moments before the end of the session after crashing his F14-T.

 

It was an extremely impressive first day in an F1 car for the Williams F1 Team's new test driver Felipe Nasr as the 21 year old Brazilian completed 87 laps and clocked the fourth fastest time just ahead of the Lotus F1 Team's Pastor Maldonado who brought out the red flags during the session due to gearbox problem similar to the issue that he suffered yesterday.

 

It was a disappointing end to the second test for the Sahara Force India team as Sergio Perez could only manage to complete 19 laps today. Despite this however the Silverstone based team can take comfort in the fact that they topped the times on the opening day of the Bahrain test which bodes well for the rest of the pre-season testing period.

 

There were further problems for Daniel Ricciardo and Red Bull Racing as the Australia could only manage 15 laps today and the RB10 spent a considerable amount of time this morning in the garage. The reigning world champions have three weeks to find a solution to their problems before they head to Melbourne for the opening race of the year. Sebastian Vettel is not panicking and is confident that the team can find a solution to the issues that they have encountered during winter testing.

 

Toro Rosso's Jean Eric Vergne was eighth fastest for the Italian team. Over at Caterham, both their race driver's Kamui Kobayashi and Marcus Ericsson were in action today and finished the day in

9th and 10th. They were the final two drivers to set times as Sauber's C33 'through a tantrum' and could only manage to complete seven laps with Adrian Sutil behind the wheel despite this however the Swiss team have come away from the four day test having learnt a lot about the car.

 

Marussia's Jules Bianchi rounded out the time sheets although the Frenchman failed to set a time and could only manage 5 laps.

 

Pre-season testing concludes next week in what could be deemed as a simulated race weekend as it takes places from next Thursday 27th February - Sunday 2nd March at the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain.

©Ben Johnston 2014