Valtteri Bottas pips Lewis Hamilton in Barcelona testing as Haas F1 suffers

Valtteri Bottas topped the second day of the final pre-season Formula 1 test for Williams, while Mercedes again showed its speed on the soft tyres and Haas F1 completed just one lap.

This was a day when more new parts were brought to the cars as the teams chase performance in the build-up to Melbourne; McLaren ran its new specification rear win, for example. Ferrari and its customer teams ran into some problems with the latest specification engine; Haas and Sauber in particular. The US team changed a turbo overnight, then found this morning on the installation lap that the new unit wasn't working properly, so had to change again, which took all day.

Bottas’ 1m23.261s was set on the supersoft Pirelli rubber mid-way through the afternoon session after the Williams driver had practiced qualifying runs on the soft compound tyres. Williams are feeling quite positive about the package at this stage.

The Finn’s time pushed Lewis Hamilton down to second, as the world champion had been fastest in the morning session on 1m23.622s. Interestingly Hamilton and Rosberg, who again ran in the afternoon, were down on straight line speed compared to normal, clearly running a lot of downforce on the car. Hamilton was 2/10ths faster in Sector 3, which is all about low speed downforce and traction, yet his top speed on the main straight was just 326km/h, compared to 337km/h last week.

Before he handed over to Nico Rosberg for the afternoon session, Hamilton had clocked up 73 laps and finished 0.6s adrift of his teammate’s current best time on the same tyres, which was set yesterday.

Much like Hamilton did on day one, Rosberg spent the afternoon session completing yet another race simulation for Mercedes and he ended up ninth in the standings. The German driver managed 91 laps, which gave Mercedes 166 for the day.

Kevin Magnussen was third for Renault on a 1m23.933s, which he recorded using the supersoft tyre. The Dane completed 126 laps and set his best time shortly before the lunch break.

Sebastian Vettel was back on-track for Ferrari and ended the day fourth quickest on a 1m24611s. The Scuderia enjoyed its most productive day of testing so far in 2016, as Vettel recorded 151 laps just a day after his teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, lost a significant amount of time with a gearbox failure.

Jenson Button was fifth for McLaren with a time of 1m25.183s, just ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, who did a three-stop race simulation in the RB12 during the afternoon session.

Carlos Sainz completed another 166 laps for Toro Rosso, the most of any one driver today, and the Spanish driver ended up seventh fastest.

Sergio Perez was eighth quickest in Force India’s VJMO9, and the Mexican driver completed 128 laps.

Pascal Wehrlein was tenth fastest for Manor Racing, just ahead of Marcus Ericsson, who completed 55 laps for Sauber. The Swedish driver caused the only red flag of the day when he spun into the gravel minus his right rear wheel at Turn 4, with one hour remaining.

Esteban Gutierrez and Haas F1 had another tough day as a turbo problem was detected on the Mexican driver’s installation lap this morning and the team was unable to fix it in time to run again.

After a fuel system issue cost the team most of the day on Tuesday, Haas F1 has only managed to complete 24 laps in the first half of the final F1 test.

Additional reporting: James Allen in Barcelona

Results: Barcelona test two, day two: With tyre compounds used to set time

1 Valtteri Bottas Williams 1m23.261s, 108 laps S/Soft

2 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m23.622s +0.361s, 73 laps Soft

3 Kevin Magnussen Renault 1m23.933s +0.672s, 126 laps S/Soft

4 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1m24.611s +1.350s, 151 laps Medium

5 Jenson Button McLaren 1m25.183s +1.922s, 121 laps Soft

6 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 1m25.235s +1.974s, 135 laps Medium

7 Carlos Sainz Toro Rosso 1m25.300s +2.039s, 166 laps Medium

8 Sergio Perez Force India 1m25.593s +2.332s, 128 laps Soft

9 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m26.298s +3.037s, 91 laps Medium

10 Pascal Wehrlein Manor 1m27.064s +3.803s, 79 laps Soft

11 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1m27.487s +4.226s, 55 laps Soft

12 Esteban Gutierrez Haas No time set, 1 lap