Grosjean tops first day at Barcelona

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

During the first day of the new winter test session at the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona, Romain Grosjean was the fastest man on track. The Lotus Renault driver was followed by McLaren's Jenson Button and Sauber's Sergio Perez. Testing will continue tomorrow.

By noon, after the fog disappeared, Pérez and Button emerged on top, with especially Pérez completing a lot of laps.

After the lunch break, Senna took over from Maldonado at Williams, but soon came to a halt nearby the pitlane entry.

11 minutes from the end of today's session, Petrov stopped out on track in turn 6 and got the session red flagged. Some members of the team were quickly brought to the scene, covering the car with a sail before getting it returned to the pitlane. The session got restarted 5 minutes later, hence with 6 minutes left on the clock.

Felipe Massa by that time had completed a full race simulation, but this of course did not result in an improvement of his best lap of the day, meaning he got stuck with the 8th fastest time, faster only to Petrov and Maldonado at the time of the red flag..

The mere 5 minutes remaining in the session though didn't appear to be a burden, as 9 out of 10 cars returned the track, several of them first doing to practice starts at the end of the pitlane.

As is usual in testing, the times don't say too much at all. Vitaly Petrov for instance was mainly busy with longer runs, while Pastor Maldonado's laps before noon didn't even come close to his 1:22.561 that he set last Friday.

HRT finally didn't come into action yet. It is still not known when they will take their car to the track.