Sebastian Vettel finished on top of the timing screens after the first of two days of post-season tyre testing at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.
Vettel’s best lap of 1:36.812s came after he completed a relatively limited run of 69 laps of the the 21-turn, 5.554km track following a morning incident in which he ran off at turn 1 and damaged his rear wing. The SF71H also sustained damage running over kerbs on two separate occasions.
“Unfortunately we had some small issues and took a bit more caution and time to change the broken parts,” Vettel said. “Nothing big, but we lost a bit of time.”
2018 Abu Dhabi post-season tyre test – Day 1 times
1
Sebastian Vettel
Ferrari
1:36.812
69
2
Valtteri Bottas
Mercedes
1:37.231
120
3
Lance Stroll
Force India
1’37.415
56
4
Max Verstappen
Red Bull
1:37.947
133
5
Sergio Perez
Force India
1:37.976
67
6
Lando Norris
McLaren
1:38.187
136
7
Nico Hulkenberg
Renault
1:38.789
128
8
Pietro Fittipaldi
Haas
1:39.201
56
9
Robert Kubica
Williams
1:39.269
32
10
George Russell
Williams
1:39.512
42
11
Kimi Räikkönen
Sauber
1:39.878
102
12
Sean Gelael
Toro Rosso
1:40.435
150
The afternoon run put him ahead of morning pace setter Valtteri Bottas who was unable to improve on his pre-lunch lap of 1:37.231s despite running 120 laps in total for the day.
“Overall, a good day of testing here ,” the Finn said. “We completed our programme without any issues and we were able to do some long and short runs on a mix of the new Pirelli compounds.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was also unable to improve after the midday break, meaning he dropped to fourth on the timing screens behind Force India’s Lance Stroll who put in a late flying lap in the final hour of proceedings.
Stroll ran only in the afternoon session and completed 56 laps, with the morning run having been in the hands of Sergio Perez who ended fifth fastest for the day as a whole ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Norris completed 133 laps during the day, which was exceeded only by the tally of 150 laps recorded by Toro Rosso’s Sean Gelael whose programme sacrificed speed for distance, meaning he ended at the bottom of Tuesday’s times.
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Vettel has triggered the first red flag stoppage of the day when he went off track at turn 1 during the third hour of the morning session.
There was a further pause when Pietro Fittipaldi was ordered to stop in track in his first outing for the Haas F1 Team. He had completed only 18 laps to that point and missed the rest of the morning while the pit crew fitted a new Ferrari power unit to the back of the VF-18. He was able to return to the track in the afternoon for a further 38 laps which raised him from the bottom of the times up to eighth place.
“We had small issues at the beginning of the day, but the team got them sorted,” he reported at the end of the day. “They really did a fantastic job to get back out there, and then in the afternoon we worked through the plan we had.”
There were also issues for Kimi Raikkonen in his first outing for Sauber in 17 years. Although he ran over a hundred laps on Tuesday, his session ended early when he came to a halt on track with an unknown technical problem. The time spent recovering the stricken car meant the session was extended by 15 minutes at the end of the day, with the chequered flag coming out at 6.15pm local time.
This week’s two-day test is to give all the teams collective experience of running on next year’s full range of tyre compounds from Pirelli. Details of which times were set on which compound were not made available to the media.
However the teams themselves will have full access to the information, in contrast to the ‘blind’ conditions they ran under in single-car tests conducted earlier in the year.
The test will conclude on Wednesday, with Charles Leclerc making his first appearance as a full Ferrari driver and Pierre Gasly likewise officially taking over at Red Bull and Carlos Sainz at McLaren. Daniil Kvyat is also set to make his return at Toro Rosso.
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