McLaren’s exciting new recruit Kevin Magnussen posted the quickest time and struggling Red Bull finally got down to business on the second day of Formula One pre-season testing in Bahrain on Thursday.
Danish rookie Magnussen, who had impressed in testing in Jerez last month, stole the show on the Sakhir circuit with a time of 1min 34.910sec.
The 21-year-old is the son of former F1 driver Jan and he joined McLaren to link up with teammate Jenson Button as a replacement for Mexican Sergio Perez.
Magnussen’s time was one-and-a-half seconds quicker than the Force India belonging to Nico Hulkenberg, who had taken the honours on Wednesday’s first session, with Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari in third.
Back in seventh, over five seconds off the pace, was Sebastian Vettel.
The German world champion completed 58 laps for Red Bull as the team enjoyed a welcome change of fortune after only mustering 21 laps over the entire five days of testing in Jerez.
The world champions will have breathed a collective sigh of relief to have finally put their testing traumas behind them, having struggled to adapt to the raft of new technical regulations introduced for the coming season.
“We did more laps today than so far the whole year, which is a step forward,” Vettel told the BBC.
“We are learning every lap so we are trying to run as much as possible even if the quality of the lap is not the best, but the most important thing for us at this stage is simply to run.”
Testing for the new season, which gets underway in Melbourne on March 16, continues on Friday.
Times
1. Kevin Magnussen (DEN/McLaren) 1hr 34min 910sec, 2. Nico Hulkenberg (GER/Force India) 1:36.445, 3. Fernando Alonso (ESP/Ferrari) 1:36.516, 4. Nico Rosberg (GER/Mercedes) 1:36.965, 5. Valtteri Bottas (FIN/Williams) 1:37.328, 6. Kamui Kobayashi (JPN/Caterham) 1:39.855, 7. Sebastian Vettel (GER/Red Bull) 1:40.340, 8. Jean-Eric Vergne (FRA/Toro Rosso) 1:40.609, 9. Esteban Gutirrez (MEX/Sauber) 1:40.717, 10. Romain Grosjean (FRA/Lotus) 1:41.670, 11. Max Chilton (GBR/Marussia) 1:42.511.
