Vettel obliterates Barcelona track record

Vettel and Ferrari did their first qualifying simulation and had jaws dropping on pitlane. But what can sandbagging Mercedes do? 1.5 days of running left.

Sebastian Vettel obliterated the unofficial lap record at Barcelona on Thursday morning of Formula 1 pre-season testing.

The Ferrari driver used hypersoft tires for the first time just before lunch break on a qualifying simulation to log the first sub-1m18s lap of the pre-season, a 1m17.953s.

Vettel followed that initial fastest effort up with a 1m17.644s, a 1m17.279s and finally a 1m17.182s to end the morning 1.176 seconds up on 2nd quick man Kevin Magnussen in the Haas at 1m18.360s on supersofts.

That was well under Daniel Ricciardo's fastest time from Wednesday, which itself had beaten the unofficial record around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya's.

Ricciardo's 1m18.047s, yesterday was almost three tenths faster than Felipe Massa's record set in 2008.

Renault driver Nico Hulkenberg on hypersofts put up a 1m18.675s and was third, 1.493s behind Vettel.

Mid-Day times