Bottas continues rise on 6th day of testing at Barcelona

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

Lewis Hamilton ended the morning session of testing at Barcelona on top of the timesheet, having completed his first run on the soft tyres with the F1 W07 car. Even though it was a short run, he still stranded 6 tenths adrift of what Rosberg managed on Tuesday.

Kevin Magnussen also showed some pace towards the end of the session, even though Renault did appear to be looking for qualifying performance, putting the Dane on the super soft tyres for just a handful of laps.

At Ferrari, Sebastian Vettel had a reliable morning, amidst talk that the new Ferrari engine is suffering from vibrations that requires the team to run the engine detuned. Vettel still recorded Ferrari's fastest time of winter testing on medium tyres but still three tenths adrift of Merc's best on mediums

Sauber and Haas meanwhile were hit be reliability issues, with Haas struggling to get on top of the fuel issue that stopped them halfway on Tuesday. McLaren had a better day, but close to lunchtime found a "suspension problem" that halted them as well.

As such, Hamilton ended the morning session, and his day, on top of the timesheet, with a run on the soft tyres.

After lunch, McLaren was among the first to go out, having fixed the issue that halted them for 40 minutes before the break.

Teams got on with race simulations, except for Valtteri Bottas who surprised onlookers by suddenly putting on a set of soft tyres to shoot up to third place on a 1:24.522. However, that is 0.9s adrift of Hamilton's earlier pace on the same compound. A second run later on, again on softs resulted in a 1:24.070.

One hour from the end, Markus Ericsson drew all cameras on him as he spun off the track and ended up in the gravel trap. During the 10-minute red flag situation, his car was returned to the pits without much obvious damage.