2014 FIA Formula One World Championship
Pre-season testing, Sakhir, Bahrain – day 3
For immediate release
Friday, February 21st, 2014
HAMILTON TOPS DAY THREE MORNING TESTING TIMES IN BAHRAIN
SAKHIR (Bahrain): England’s Lewis Hamilton posted the fastest time after the third morning of pre-season Formula One testing at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir on Friday.
The Mercedes driver clocked a fastest lap of 1min 34.263sec and that was 1.419sec quicker than his former team-mate Jenson Button managed in the McLaren. Esteban Gutierrez was third in the Sauber with a best tour of 1min 37.180sec.
Max Chilton forced the first red flag of the morning as Hamilton took to the track for the first time, with Lotus rookie Pastor Maldonado also in action and responsible for the second red flag incident of the morning after the car ‘just stopped’ on the track. He did, however, post a fourth quickest lap of 1min 39.642sec.
Kevin Magnussen set the fastest time on the second day of testing to follow up Nico Hulkenberg’s performance on Wednesday. He spent much of the morning in the pit garage, as the McLaren team worked on his MP4-29, before setting a hot lap of 1min 34.910sec. Magnussen handed over testing duties to former world champion Jenson Button on Friday.
Hulkenberg finished the session just 1.5 seconds behind the Dane and Fernando Alonso set the third fastest time for Ferrari, albeit two seconds behind the McLaren, before handing testing duties over to Kimi Raikkonen on Friday. The Finn took to the circuit for just 12 laps during the morning session.
Nico Rosberg ran fourth quickest and completed a healthy number of laps despite stopping out on track twice during the morning.
World champion Sebastian Vettel completed 59 laps to give Red Bull their first productive day of the pre-season, although the RB10 driver’s best time was some 5.4 seconds slower than Magnussen’s quickest lap. Daniel Ricciardo took over testing duties on Friday.
The busiest driver on day two was Valtteri Bottas of the Williams team, who ran for 116 laps and finished fifth on the timesheet. Kamui Kobayashi of Caterham had the sixth-quickest lap although he was still 4.945s off of Magnussen’s leading mark.
Ends
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