Max second during morning of final test day

Published on 10 March 2017 by Stefan Meens

Max Verstappen finished the morning session of the final pre-season test day in second. His 1:19.438 was eight tenths slower than Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn topped the leader boards emphasizing the Scuderia’s fine form in testing so far.

Lance Stroll (Williams) and Marcus Ericsson (Sauber) were the most productive drivers with 59 laps each on the board. Max managed 33 laps in Red Bull Racing’s RB13.

“It went reasonably well this morning”, said Max to Verstappen.nl. The team mainly focused on shorter runs. “We tried the soft compound. It felt okay. Of course there is room for improvement but we were able to run our program without any issues, which is the main thing. The practice starts went well too.”

The final morning session resembled most of the other testing days so far with Ferrari impressing, McLaren struggling with reliability and several red flags per session. Friday morning followed that pattern with Kimi Raikkonen on the pace for Ferrari and Mclaren causing two red flags as Alonso was forced to return to the pits on foot.

The other two session interruptions were caused by Romain Grosjean in the Haas F1. The Frenchman parked his car in the gravel traps and later on the track, bringing the total of red flags to four.

Pre-Season Test 2 - Circuit de Barcelona-Cataluyna - Friday 10 March 2017

RESULTS DAY 4 - MORNING

1.	Raikkonen	Ferrari		  1:18.634		48	
2.	Verstappen	Red Bull Racing	  1:19.438	+0.804	33	
3.	Sainz 		Toro Rosso	  1:19.837	+1.203	39	
4.	Bottas		Mercedes	  1:19.845	+1.211	53	
5.	Hülkenberg	Renault	          1:19.885	+1.251	45	
6.	Perez		Force India	  1:20.116	+1.482	46	
7.	Stroll		Williams	  1:20.335	+1.701	59	
8.	Grosje an	Haas		  1:21.429	+2.795	43	
9.	Ericsson	Sauber		  1:21.670	+3.036	59	
10.	Alonso		McLaren	          1:22.731	+4.097	19