Barcelona Day 1: Massa goes fastest with Mercedes power

Williams F1

Felipe Massa was fastest for Williams on the first day of Formula 1's final pre-season test at Barcelona.

Massa set his time on soft tires and completed a three-lap qualifying simulation run in the afternoon, clocking a 1m23.500s. Underscoring the power of the Mercedes engine, Massa did the time on soft tires, not super-softs.

Sauber's Marcus Ericsson used super softs to go second quickest with Lewis Hamilton, who set the pace in the morning session on the medium tires, third.

However, Mercedes' Hamilton did not complete a single lap after lunch following a failure with the MGU-K that the team could not fix in time to get the car back out on track.

Mercedes revealed that a "failure in the hybrid system" was keeping the W06 in the garage while later adding the "problem diagnosed as MGU-K failure" and as such their day was done.

That meant just six teams took to the track after lunch as Force India were waiting on their new VJM08 while McLaren had already announced that a "hydraulic leak" had curtailed Button's day after a measly seven laps.

One driver who didn't have any problems on the day was Massa.

Not only was his 1:23.500, set on the soft tyres, the best time on Thursday but he also covered more than 100 laps in his FW37.

Marcus Ericsson finished second quickest as a run on the supersoft Pirelli's boosted him to a 1:24.276. He was, however, still 0.776s short of Massa's P1 time.

Sauber declared it to have been a "productive" day as the Swedish racer was the busiest driver, completing 122 laps,

Hamilton, whose best time was set on the medium tyres, finished third, 1.381s down, while Daniil Kvyat was fourth quickest.

The Red Bull driver was responsible for the first of the day's two red flags as he stopped while exiting the pits first thing in the morning.

Romain Grosjean brought his E23 home in fifth place ahead of the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen. Both drivers were over two seconds off the pace.

Carlos Sainz Jr, who was running in a revised STR10, brought out the day's second red flag as his Toro Rosso stopped at Turn 10 during the afternoon's session.

He was seventh quickest with Button completing the timesheets.

Felipe Massa
It was a good day for us and the car behaved well. When we tried to use the new soft tyre we managed to get some quicker laps in. The FW37 never showed a sign of an issue and this has been the case since we arrived at the first test in Jerez. We are doing a lot of work and seem to be moving forward. I have just one more day in the car before the first race, so Saturday will be important

Lewis Hamilton
I feel so much better this week. I have a lot more energy. I'm actually going to head back and go for a run now as I haven't had much to do this afternoon! Of course, we would have liked to have a few more laps today – especially as the sun came out later on. But sometimes you have those days. I don't see it as too much of a negative. It's good that you find these things, whatever issues you might have, and iron them out now. It means hopefully you won't find them at the first race. Testing is always difficult. If you get the whole day in the car, the sun is out and the tires are working you can make more changes to learn where you want to put the car. Naturally, the more you drive the more you feel comfortable – but to be honest in the 50 laps I had today I felt ready to go. I had a positive feeling in the car and it was good to get the tires working. I've got one more day to now hopefully have a clean run and really pinpoint where I want to put the car for the first race.

Romain Grosjean:
"We tried a lot of different set-ups today so there was a lot of returning to the garage for different things to be changed, which is all part of testing. The car's been reliable again and we've gone through quite a bit of work even if the lap count isn’t as high as some other days – it's all part of the learning process at a test. I'm looking forward to watching further progress with the car tomorrow then getting back out on track myself on Saturday."

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