Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheets on the first official day of testing fior the 2017 Formula One season at the Barcelona circuit in Sopain i=on Monday, the three time champion putting in a total of 73 laps during his time in the car to record a best time of 1: 21.765, just over a tenth faster than Ferrari man Sebastien Vettel, who recorded an astounding 128 laps, the most of any driver on the day.
Third fastest was the Williams of Felipe Massa, who also logged a good number of laps, 103, with the Haas of Kevin Magnussen in ourth.
Daniel Ricciardo, who was fifth for Red Bull, called out the first red flags of the day when his Red Bull stopped on track early in the morning session. Thankfully the team sorted the issue and he managed to get back out and register a total of 50 laps.
Meanwhile, McLaren's Fernando Alonso also ran into issues early ansd only managed to record 29 laps for the day….
“Of course, it's disappointing to have encountered issues so early in the running, but this situation is not too unusual with a brand-new car. It's better to have these issues here than in Australia. Honda is investigating the problem carefully in order to find the proper solutions, so we need to let them do that before drawing any premature conclusions,” said Eric Boullier. “We had a filming day yesterday which went fine, so today is a bit of a setback, but the team worked hard during the morning session to get the car back up and running as quickly as we could following the power unit change. It's encouraging that we were able to continue our programme in the afternoon and get some laps under our belt – that's the most important thing. It's just the first day, so let's wait and see. We've shown some progress in the past two seasons, and I hope we can continue seeing progress this year, too.”
Times from day one: