Valtteri Bottas finished the opening day of the young driver test on Thursday as the fastest driver in the Williams. His time of 1m31.436s, posted in the morning session, was comfortably faster than Marussia's Max Chilton and Rio Haryanto or the HRT of Ma Qing Hua.
Rain started around 2:30, bringing in Bottas and Haryanto, but the Finn still went out for a final run before the flag fell. Bottas concentrated on longer runs during the afternoon, completing a race simulation and taking his tally of laps for the day to 120.
Haryanto finished the day 0.846sec slower than Chilton had gone in the morning session in the Marussia, but only completed 19 laps, 15 less than the British driver had done. His quickest lap (1m37.404s) was done after he had to return to the pits to adjust his brake pedal box, which was not set up to his liking, costing 20 minutes of track time.
Chinese driver Qing Hua went faster in the afternoon on soft tyres, posting his fastest lap of 1m37.829s during a qualifying simulation, although the team reported that he locked his brakes on that lap and lost several tenths of a second. The rest of the session was spent conducting a mixture of long and short runs on hard and soft tires and included a spin as Qing Hua activated DRS on the exit of Village.
Today's times:
Pos Driver Team Time
1. Valtteri Bottas Williams-Renault 1m31.436s
2. Max Chilton Marussia-Cosworth 1m36.558s + 5.122s
3. Rio Haryanto Marussia-Cosworth 1m37.404s + 5.968s
4. Ma Qing Hua HRT-Cosworth 1m37.829s + 6.393s
All Timing Unofficial