Daniel Ricciardo breaks Barcelona track record in F1 testing
Barcelona: Daniel Ricciardo showed Red Bull's pace by lapping Barcelona's Formula One circuit faster than anyone since the track was reconfigured in 2007.
The Australian's time of one minute 18.047 seconds on the new hyper-soft Pirelli tyres lit up the timing screens on the second day of the final pre-season test at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Daniel Ricciardo takes his Red Bull for a spin in Barcelona testing.
Photo: APThe time was more than a second quicker than Lewis Hamilton's 2017 Spanish Grand Prix pole position of 1:19.149 for Mercedes, and also quicker than any lap in last year's pre-season testing.
Track records set in testing are deemed unofficial.
Four-time world champion Hamilton, who was fastest last week, was second on the timesheets on Wednesday with a lap 0.043 seconds slower on the ultra-soft tyres with Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel third.
"There's three quick teams and there's no doubt that Red Bull are going to be people that we are going to be fighting with this year," Mercedes technical head James Allison said.
"There's clearly no doubt about that... there's still some blurriness, it's still not possible to say for sure whether we've got our nose in front of them or they've got their nose in front of us. But you can say it's close."
Vettel, who did 171 laps on Tuesday when he was fastest, was drafted in for the morning after teammate Kimi Raikkonen felt unwell.
McLaren's Fernando Alonso was fourth fastest at the halfway point, with teams deciding not to break for lunch to make up for bad weather last week, and did 47 laps before pulling over with smoke coming from the car.
The new F1 season starts with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 25.
Reuters
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