SEBASTIAN VETTEL finished on top at the start of Formula One’s third pre-season test that was dominated by red flags and rain showers.
Testing times are always notoriously difficult to judge, and this year even more so as teams run varying fuel loads in preparation for the refuelling ban that comes into force for the new season.
The inclement weather that dogged last week’s second test at the Jerez circuit was again in evidence at the same venue, adding to the difficulty in assessing times.
As a baseline, Vettel’s best lap of the 103 he clocked up for Red Bull Racing was one minute 22.593 seconds on a drying track.
That, though, was three seconds adrift of the quickest lap of last week posted by McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, who finished 0.424secs off Vettel following a late blitz.
Hamilton put in a series of hot laps during the closing 10 minutes of the eight-hour session after Rubens Barrichello had caused the fifth red flag of the day – and his second – by stopping on track in his Williams. Hamilton, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, who was third quickest finishing 0.611secs behind Vettel, and Paul di Resta on his test debut with Force India, brought out the other three red flags on a stop-start day.
