Barcelona Day 1: Vettel on top

The F1 teams were back in action at the Circuit de Catalunya today for testing, which saw Sebastian Vettel at the wheel of the RB7 on top for the first day of the Barcelona test.

A damp start to the day gave the teams a chance to test the intermediate Pirelli tires, before conditions began to dry. Drivers had a couple of minor offs in the morning session.

Teams like Mercedes ran full race distances in the afternoon and did not focus on qualifying laps.

Sebastian Vettel said: “Unfortunately, we didn’t complete many laps today, as we had a long break – longer than expected. It wasn’t anything big, nothing broke, but at the test if you think there might be a problem then you’d rather take the car apart and check. The boys did their best and we still got some runs towards the end of the day – not as much as we’d like, but the car feels good and hopefully we’ll do more tomorrow."

Michael Schumacher: "We had a good day and it is certainly satisfying to finish a race distance with all of the systems operational and to have everything working fine. Now we have to turn our focus to performance and it was important to complete today's simulation to understand how the car and tires behave going from a heavy to lighter fuel load."

TIMES

Pos Driver Car Time Laps
1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1:24.374 37
2. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1:25.485 101
3. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1:25.638 57
4. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 1:25.641 78
5. Jenson Button McLaren 1:26.365 77
6. Paul di Resta Force India 1:26.575 26
7. Rubens Barrichello Williams 1:26.912 52
8. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1:27.512 90
9. Narain Karthikeyan HRT 1:28.393 116
10. Heikki Kovalainen Team Lotus 1:30.065 54
11. Jerome D'Ambrosio Marussia Virgin 1:30.950 116
12. Vitaly Petrov Lotus Renault 1:35.174 20
13. Nick Heidfeld Lotus Renault 1:44.324 27