Bottas managed to set the fastest lap we’ve seen so far this year, a 1:19.705 on ultrasoft tyres, but the lap time was only a tenth faster than what he’d managed on supersoft tyres on the previous run.
Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel ended the day second fastest and 0.25s off Bottas’ time, but he managed to set the time on soft tyres. Throughout the day, the Ferrari seemed more steady than the Mercedes, whether it was driven by Bottas of teammate Lewis Hamilton.
Lots of other drivers weren’t looking too steady. Renault’s Jolyon Palmer brought the session to a halt early in the day when he ran into the gravel on an out lap, and Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz brought out the red flag later in the day when he stopped at turn four.
But the driver that spent the most time walking away from his abandoned car today was Williams’ Lance Stroll. After crashing yesterday, the rookie was put in the car for a second consecutive day, but it was another difficult day for the teenager.
Just after the chequered flag was brought out for lunch, Stroll parked his car in the gravel. Later in the day, the Canadian hit the tyre barrier after he lost the rear of the car at the exit of turn five.
Whilst it’s easy to say Stroll may have made the jump up to F1 a little too early, it would be surprising if a rookie didn’t make these mistakes in his first test, especially with the big jump between what he’s been testing in the private tests and what he’s behind the wheel of now.
It seems like Stroll is reacting to every twitch or judder of the car, and is yet to learn when he needs to correct a mistake, and when the car will sort itself out.
One team that didn’t have any problems today was McLaren. After two frustrating days, the team managed to get through their test programme without any apparent issues. Fernando Alonso was still pretty low down on the timing screens, but he managed to complete more than 70 laps.
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Do you think this is a sign Stroll has made the leap too early, or will he be a strong driver this season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
And these are 2 crashes that are vivid to my mind, he had more of this sort of incidents. Will be interesting to watch, but looking at this it seems to me that he need all his brainpower to keep the car on track and in that process sometimes loses track of what is going on around him.
