Vettel crashes, Sainz goes fastest in testing

Sebastian Vettel crashed his Ferrari on the second day of Formula One's final pre-season test in Spain on Wednesday while Carlos Sainz went fastest for McLaren.

Vettel's crash in the morning at the Circuit de Catalunya was the team's first pre-season setback after looking quick and reliable so far.

It also curtailed the Italian team's running, with only one more lap completed in the afternoon, and forced a change of plan for the final two days.

Instead of Vettel and team-mate Charles Leclerc sharing the daily duties, they will now do a day each with the Monegasque in the car on Thursday and four-time world champion Vettel on Friday.

Ferrari said Vettel's sudden accident at turn three was caused by a mechanical problem with the front left.

Vettel, who had done 40 laps, was unhurt but went to the medical centre for routine checks.

"By the feeling there was an issue with the front left corner and from there, there wasn't anything that I could have done to avoid the impact," said the German.

"So after that I obviously wasn't in control any more so more or less went straight into the barriers."

Sainz set the best time of one minute 17.144 seconds on the soft C4 tyre and completed 130 laps, the same number as Poland's Robert Kubica in the Williams.

"There are still a few niggles and stoppages that we wish we didn’t have, but every time we go out on track we’re a bit more reliable and we keep moving in the right direction," commented Sainz.

"The timesheets still aren’t important. We’re only focused on our run plans and tests, rather than wasting our energy on trying to calculate where we’re at compared to the others."

Mexican Sergio Perez was second fastest for Racing Point, on the softest C5, and Vettel third on harder and slower C3 tyres.

Mercedes were again towards the bottom of the timesheets with Valtteri Bottas eighth and five-time world champion team mate Lewis Hamilton ninth.

Between them, the Mercedes pair did 176 laps however.

"We got a lot of laps today which is a good thing, but we've come across a few little hurdles, so we're just working our way through them, trying to be as diligent as possible trying to understand the causes," said Hamilton.

"Everyone is working flat out and I'm sure we will get there. You need days like this to be able to bring light to the things that we need to work on."

Mercedes technical director James Allison said an afternoon race simulation had seen graining of the front tyres, and feared that could be a general feature of the year ahead.

Pos.	Driver	Team	Best Time	Total Laps
1.	Carlos Sainz	McLaren F1 Team	1:17.144	130
2.	Sergio Perez	Racing Point F1 Team	1:17.842	88
3.	Sebastian Vettel	Scuderia Ferrari	1:18.195	40
4.	Kimi Raikkonen	Alfa Romeo Racing	1:18.209	113
5.	Romain Grosjean	Rich Energy Haas F1 Team	1:18.330	120
6.	Max Verstappen	Aston Martin Red Bull Racing	1:18.395	128
7.	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda	1:18.682	101
8.	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes AMG Motorsport	1:18.941	74
9.	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes AMG Motorsport	1:18.943	102
10.	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault F1 Team	1:19.056	58
11.	Robert Kubica	ROKiT Williams Racing	1:19.367	130
12.	Daniel Ricciardo	Renault F1 Team	1:22.597	72
13.	Charles Leclerc	Scuderia Ferrari	--	1