Felipe Massa has scored another top finish for Mercedes power in Bahrain as Williams scorched the grid in their day which saw them complete just under 100 laps.
Setting a time of 1:33.258 the Brazilian was more than two tenths faster than Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes factory car who clocked a 1:33.484.
The German probably got the better run going laps wise as he completed a grand total of 103 laps despite losing most of the morning’s running due to an engine change in his car.
In third place – which should be looked on as a very promising sign due to the stop-start nature of their day – was Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari who were a second back from the Mercedes in a day confined mostly to the final two hours.
At this point it may as well be a copy and paste job from the reports made at the last test in Bahrain. It was another poor day for Red Bull as they completed exactly zero laps due to yet more problems with the Renault power unit.
In the first attempted run of the day, Sebastian Vettel completed exactly half an installation lap before grinding to a halt with a second run reaching the dizzying heights of the pit lane exit before the mechanics saw mercy and put the day out of its misery just before the unofficial lunch break.
Indeed talking to Autosport, Vettel believed the problems would be behind the Milton Keynes based team coming into this test: “We thought we would be in a much better place this week compared to last week. That hasn’t really been the case,”
“There’s no point being too emotional at this stage. We really have to take it step by step.
“We know how serious it is, especially inside the team – on Renault’s side and our side. We’ve been a team the last five years and things have been fantastic.”
It was also a poor day for Adrian Sutil and Sauber who had to write off the entire day due to an engine change which took longer than planned.
Compounding the woes for Renault was the Lotus team’s problem with the MGU Kinetic built into the power unit which saw the team complete only 33 laps before the problem was deemed too big to fix.
Everyone will be hoping for a better day in the last day of testing tomorrow especially McLaren who seem to be slipping down the order while others make advancements with their 2014 challengers.
