Ricciardo sets new lap record as McLaren suffer

Daniel Ricciardo has broken the 10-year track record at Circuit de Catalunya for Red Bull to top the times on the second day of the second Formula 1 pre-season test while McLaren missed almost seven hours of track time.

The Red Bull driver beat Lewis Hamilton’s provisional timesheet-topper with a 1m 18.047s set on Pirelli’s new hypersoft tyres to beat Felipe Massa’s previous lap record of 1m 18.339s from 2008 set with Ferrari.

Hamilton, who initially broke the record first before seeing his lap chalked off for cutting the Turn 14 chicane, kept hold of second spot on the timesheet with his best lap of 1m 18.400s set on ultrasofts having completed 90 laps for Mercedes before handing over to Valtteri Bottas for the afternoon session.

The Finnish driver quickly grabbed hold of third place on the combined timesheet with a 1m 18.560s having also experimented with qualifying set-up.

Sebastian Vettel, who stepped in for the unwell Kimi Raikkonen for the morning, held on to fourth on the times despite not opting to run a qualifying simulation at Ferrari.

Further down the grid it was another disastrous day for McLaren as its running was curtailed by an oil leak for Fernando Alonso having completed an initial 46 laps in the opening two hours. Despite McLaren predicting a three hour Renault engine change the Woking-based team suffered a six-and-a-half hour delay and return to track action with 13 minutes remaining.

The Renault works team enjoyed a productive day of trouble-free running have split its programme between Carlos Sainz and Nico Hulkenberg to give both drivers opportunity to run race simulation stints.

Romain Grosjean saw his afternoon slightly stalled at Haas due to an oil leak but was able to return to track action before the end of the day.

Williams were another team to split its running between its F1 drivers with Lance Stroll handing over to Sergey Sirotkin for the afternoon session in a relatively low-key day for the Grove-based squad.

Toro Rosso Honda’s Brendon Hartley found the limits of his STR13 after a small spin midway through the day before a technical issue which forced him to stop at pit exit. The Kimi driver still notched up over a century of laps to further cement Honda’s impressive turnaround in reliability.

At the bottom of the F1 testing timesheet both Force India and Alfa Romeo Sauber concentrated on extensive mileage for Esteban Ocon and Charles Leclerc respectively with over 130 laps each without troubling the top lap times, while F1 rookie Leclerc suffered a late spin into the gravel at Turn 12 to cause a final red flag stoppage.