Raikkonen’s headline time of 1:20.872s came on the soft compound late in the afternoon, 0.8s quicker than Max Verstappen’s best time of the day. It caps an impressive week for the Italian team which has seen it top two out of four days (Mercedes were quickest for the other two). Questions still linger for Ferrari: one-lap pace and qualifying performance was a weakness for the team last year, but it has stuck to using just the medium and soft tyres so far in pre-season. Next week’s qualifying simulations will go a long way towards revealing Ferrari’s true potential but it will go into the second week encouraged by the start it has made to 2017.
After three days of completing race distances either side of lunch, Mercedes encountered a rare reliability gremlin. Lewis Hamilton was a notable absentee during the first wet portion of the day and Mercedes soon confirmed an electrical fault on the W08 had prevented him from leaving the garage. With the issue rectified as lunch approached and Valtteri Bottas scheduled for the afternoon, the team rolled out of the garage at 12:30 with the Finnish driver at the wheel.
Bottas accumulated 68 laps before the chequered flag but finished a lowly eighth on the timesheets, hinting at Mercedes making up for lost time by focusing on other areas than outright pace. The morning issue may not have been as serious as some encountered by other teams this week but served as a reminder the world champions were far from bulletproof in the reliability department in 2016. At the end of the day the team cut Bottas’ session 50 minutes short due to an anomaly in its data that it wanted to investigate.
Max Verstappen finished a positive day for Red Bull with 85 laps to his name. The Dutch teenager went straight out at the start of the day and clearly relished the wet conditions, pushing Pirelli’s blue-striped tyre hard from the start of his stint. The result concludes an average week for Red Bull, though many in the paddock believe the former world champions are yet to show anything close to the true potential of its car as it works on reliability of its Renault engine.
Renault’s Jolyon Palmer finished third after taking over from Nico Hulkenberg mid-way through the afternoon, posting a 1:21.778s on soft tyres. That put him one place above Haas’ Romain Grosjean, who tallied a mammoth 118 laps — by far the best of the day — for Haas as the American team continued to quietly accumulate mileage. Fifth was Antonio Giovinazzi, who has thoroughly impressed for Sauber in his stand-in role for the injured Pascal Wehrlein. The Italian, who is Ferrari’s reserve driver, completed 84 laps and earned fourth with a late lap on the purple ultra-soft tyres.
Sergio Perez finished fifth for Force India to end what has been a disjointed opening week of testing for the Silverstone-based team. Perez’s 82 laps were a fair return for a day disrupted by the soaking of the track but the team appears to have a lot of work to do next week. Stoffel Vandoorne compiled 67 laps and posted McLaren’s quickest time of the week — a 1:22.576 on ultra-soft tyres, albeit nearly three whole seconds shy of Valtteri Bottas’ benchmark on the same tyre from Wednesday. Bottas rounded off the order ahead of Hulkenberg, who completed a half century of laps before handing over to teammate Palmer.
It was a difficult day for Toro Rosso, with Daniil Kvyat completing a single installation lap before problems were detected in its Renault engine. The power unit change took the entire day, keeping the striking blue, silver and red car in the garage until the chequered flag fell at 18:00 local time. Williams did not feature in the day’s running at all due to damage sustained in Lance Stroll’s heavy crash on Wednesday, with the team withdrawing before proceedings began to prepare its back-up chassis for next week.
Times at close:
1. Kimi Raikkonen – Ferrari – 1:20.872 – 93 laps
2. Max Verstappen – Red Bull – 1:21.769 – 85 laps
3. Jolyon Palmer – Renault – 1:21.778 – 39 laps
4. Romain Grosjean – Haas – 1:22.309 – 118 laps
5. Antonio Giovinazzi – Sauber – 1:22.401 – 84 laps
6. Sergio Perez – Force India – 1:22.534 – 82 laps
7. Stoffel Vandoorne – McLaren – 1:22.576 – 67 laps
8. Valtteri Bottas – Mercedes – 1:23.443 – 68 laps (afternoon)
9. Nico Hulkenberg – Renault – 1:24.974 – 51 laps
10. Daniil Kvyat – Toro Rosso – no time set – 1 lap