Pirelli clocked up almost 1500 miles over its two days of wet-tyre testing, topped by Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari, ahead of the new Formula 1 season.
Four-time F1 champion Vettel, replacing Kimi Raikkonen in the cockpit of last year’s SF15-T, posted the quickest time of Tuesday with a lap of 1m06.750s, although times were irrelevant for the purposes of this test.
Vettel edged Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat by less than a tenth of a second, the Russian taking over from Daniel Ricciardo for day two, with McLaren reserve Stoffel Vandoorne a second down at the end of his second day in the MP4-30.
The three teams, running in unmodified 2015-spec machinery, completed 374 laps in total, 89 more than on Monday, and a total of 659 laps overall.
The two-day test was conducted with the aid of the sprinkler system built into the Paul Ricard track, which artificially soaked the asphalt.
Pirelli has tested combinations of different treads and compounds of prototype full-wet tyres, while for the second day the Italian company also ran intermediates to act as a baseline.
Pirelli has been working on improving the longevity and performance of its wet tyre and is set to introduce changes to its rubber this year as a result of the data gained at the test.
F1’s next on-track action will be at the first of two pre-season tests for the new-for-2016 machinery at Barcelona’s Catalunya circuit on February 22-25, with the second test on March 1-4.
TUESDAY TIMES:
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps 1. Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1m06.750s 134 2. Daniil Kvyat Red Bull 1m06.833s +0.083s 113 3. Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren 1m07.758s +1.008s 127
