F1 Pre-Season Test, Day 2: Scuderia Ferrari's Leclerc fastest.

Leclerc fastest – Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was fastest in day two of pre-season testing at the Circuit De Barcelona-Catalunya in Barcelona, in a day, which saw two red flags caused in two separate incidents by Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Haas F1 Team’s Nikita Mazepin.

Charles Leclerc, #16, Scuderia Ferrari, F1-75, Formula 1 2022 Pre-Season Testing Day Two, Circuit De Barcelona-Catalunya, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Image credit to Ferrari. Leclerc fastest. F1 2022 Pre-Season Test.

Perez who was seventh on the time-sheets, brought out the first red flag of the day when he stopped his RB18 racer late in the morning’s running, and after a long-stay in the garage due to a gearbox issue and did not return to the track until the end of the day.

Mazepin who ended the day eighth, stopped his Ferrari-powered VF-22 with a damaged fuel pump halfway through the afternoon, causing a 15-minute red flag – but the Russian re-emerged on the circuit an hour after the incident.

Leclerc secured top spot on the time-sheets later on, posting a 1:19.689, completing 79 laps in total, with AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly in second and losing narrowly in the final sector to the Monegasque-youngster – as the Frenchman lapped a solid 147 tours in the AT03.

McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, who finished the morning’s running in top spot, slipped to third in the classification as the Australian completed 126 laps in the MCL36 with the Woking-based outfit working on tyre performance, set-up and aerodynamics in their programme.

Mercedes’ George Russell worked his way up into fourth at the final hour of the day, posting a 1:20.537 and 0.848 down on time-topper Leclerc, after taking over duties in the afternoon from team-mate Lewis Hamilton (who was down in 16th and completed 40 laps) – whilst Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz rounded out the top five with the Spaniard setting a 1:20.546, clocking 71 laps in mileage as the Scuderia’s new challenger, the F1-75 hit 303 laps (1416 kilometres) on the mileage charts, the most of any team so far.

Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel placed sixth on the time-sheets, running 74 laps of the Barcelona circuit in the AMR22 and set a 1:21.430, whilst the aforementioned Perez was seventh, adding 40 laps to his tally to his morning run of 38.

Mazepin jumped to eighth for Haas late on as the Russian completed 44 laps in mileage despite his stoppage at turn four.

Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon and Nicholas Latifi ended day two in ninth and 11th respectively on the time-sheets, completing 108 laps in total as the Grove-based outfit continued to iron out minor issues to the FW44 and extract it’s performance.

Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN’s Guanyu Zhou rounded out the top ten with the Chinese driver running a solid 71 laps of mileage in the C42, whilst his team-mate Valtteri Bottas was down in 14th, only completing 21 tours after suffering reliability issues.

Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll finished the day 12th in the classifications, racking up 55 laps on the mileage charts and posting a 1:21.920 in the AMR22 and ahead of Uralkali Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher who was 13th in the order and completed 10 laps more (66 laps) than the Canadian in mileage.

BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Esteban Ocon ended day two of testing in 14th, lapping a brilliant 125 laps of the Circuit De Barcelona-Catalunya working on the A522’s car set-up, understanding it’s characteristics and running a race-long simulation in the afternoon.

The aforementioned former team-mates Bottas and Hamilton were 15th and 16th in the order respectively.

Today is the last day of running at the Circuit De Barcelona-Catalunya before the team’s leave Spain and head over to Bahrain for Formula 1’s official pre-season test.