Raikkonen tops morning session of day 3 at Barcelona

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

Alfa Romeo's Kimi Raikkonen seems to have confirmed that the new C38 is no slouch, something that followers had already expected based on their performances in the first two days of testing.

Around 12 o'clock, Raikkonen set the fastest time of the test so far, rounding a lap in 1m17.762s, on the red-marked C5 tyre, the softest available. The Finn seemed to be on form today as he went pretty quickly around the track quite early on in the day as well.

When Raikkonen did so, McLaren were still busy adapting their car, allowing Sainz to only join the other teams on track at 11:20.

Quite contrary to Alfa Romeo's performance is that of Renault. Hulkenberg was repeatedly seen pushing, with some oversteer going into a few corners, but he didn't really get anywhere near the top of the timesheet. On the C4 tyre, he managed 1m18.800s.

The morning session only saw a single red flag, when Fittipaldi stopped the Haas VF-19 on track at Turn 9. The Haas stopped in Grosjean's hands on Monday morning too, which was caused by a fuel pressure issue. We'll have to wait to see what's caused this stoppage. The stoppage was immediately the end of Fittipaldi's action, as Haas announced Grosjean would take over for the rest of the day.

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Once again, from Mercedes' point of view, there was no performance news. Bottas completed the most laps of any driver this morning (88), but his best was slowest of all. He completed most of his laps on the C2 and C3 compounds.