Barcelona F1 Pre-season Test [1]: Raikkonen on top as McLaren hits problems

Barcelona F1 Pre-season Test [1]: Raikkonen on top as McLaren hits problems - Kimi Raikkonen's late charge has handed him top spot for the morning session of day four at the opening pre-season test while Fernando Alonso failed to complete a timed lap as his McLaren suffers more problems.

After Renault's Kevin Magnussen had led proceeding for the first three hours of the day's action the Ferrari driver strapped on the yellow-banded soft compound Pirelli tyres and instantly claimed the fastest time with a 1m 24.460s.

In a near-identical testing programme to his team-mate Sebastian Vettel, Raikkonen was unleashed with the new purple-banded ultra-soft Pirelli tyres in the final 30 minutes and instantly went almost a full second quicker to set the third best time of the test overall with a 1m 23.477s.

At the other end of the pits there were contrasting fortunes for Fernando Alonso who was unable to set a timed lap after a coolant leak meant he only posted three untimed laps in the entire session as McLaren frantically fixed the issue.

Despite being upstaged by Ferrari, Magnussen held on to second having set his quickest time on the yellow softs, a tenth ahead of Max Verstappen in the Toro Rosso.

Daniil Kvyat once again worked under the radar with Red Bull setting 57 laps with a best of 1m 25.900 on the mediums, while Sauber prepared to say goodbye to the 2015 car as its new challenger will be unleashed at the second test next week.

Lewis Hamilton also completed his opening F1 test with 96 laps in the session to notch up a total of 343 in all across the four days. He ended the morning session sixth overall and will now hand over to Nico Rosberg for the afternoon running.

Force India's new development driver Alfonso Celis reappeared in the VJM09, finishing the morning seventh in front of Rio Haryanto in the Manor, as Williams was relatively displaced after spending the session completing constant-speed runs for data and aerodynamic work.

Haas and Esteban Gutierrez completed the listed runners with a low-key session of jut 26 laps but it was a huge total compared to Alonso's three installations before his coolant problem in the McLaren.

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