Vettel smashes Barcelona F1 track record for Ferrari

Sebastian Vettel stole a march on the field through the morning session of the penultimate day of Formula 1 pre-season testing in Barcelona, blitzing the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya track record as Ferrari turned up the wick.

Vettel completed a number of fast hypersoft tyre runs towards the end of the morning session, recording a fastest lap time of 1:17.182 to comfortably record the best time of pre-season testing so far and finish over one second clear of the field.

Mercedes did not opt to match Ferrari's programme, with Valtteri Bottas instead focusing on long runs en route to seventh place, racking up 97 laps in total. He will hand over to teammate Lewis Hamilton for the afternoon.

Kevin Magnussen led Haas to second place overall, finishing 1.1 seconds down on Vettel at the front of the field on supersofts, with Nico Hulkenberg slotting into third for Renault on hypersofts.

Pierre Gasly took P4 for Toro Rosso-Honda after a trouble-free morning, but  McLaren had a mixed session with Stoffel Vandoorne behind the wheel of the MCL33. Despite leading early on, the Belgian finished the morning fifth-fastest, 1.6 seconds behind Vettel even after completing his best run on hypersofts. Vandoorne was kept in the garage for nearly two hours, though, with the team saying it was checking data on the car.

Marcus Ericsson took sixth for Sauber ahead of Bottas and Williams' Robert Kubica, who notched 73 laps across the morning ahead of his handover to Lance Stroll this afternoon. Sergio Perez finished the morning ninth-fastest for Force India while Max Verstappen propped up the timesheets for Red Bull in P10.

Following a one-hour lunch break, running will resume at 2pm local time in Barcelona.