F1 Pre-Season Testing 2017: Times and Tuesday Analysis from Barcelona

Mercedes flexed their muscles for a second day in Barcelona for Formula One testing, with Lewis Hamilton leading the standings after the morning session, but it was Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari who recorded the overall fastest lap on Tuesday.

The Ice Man clocked 1 minute, 20.960 seconds to lead the timesheet, a thousandth of a second ahead of the Brit's best effort.

Elsewhere, McLaren were forced into an engine change, while Renault’s Jolyon Palmer was confined to the garage for almost the entirety of the session, with a late red flag and a subsequent extension allowing the team to eventually get him out on track for an installation lap.

Formula One's official Twitter feed provided details of the best performances:

Tuesday Recap

Eyebrows were raised as Raikkonen went fastest in Catalonia, proving Ferrari have a chance of competing with Mercedes this term.

Hamilton had dominated the morning session as the Silver Arrows had a second-consecutive day of fine testing, but Raikkonen showed he has lost none of his legendary pace.

Formula One provided the standings from the morning runs in Barcelona:

For Mercedes, the session was another continuation of the good work done on Monday and a sign that they’re going to be the team to beat once again.

Having posted the quickest lap time and 73 laps on Day 1 in the evening session, Hamilton was first to set a time on Tuesday and was quickly into his groove again, putting together trouble-free laps and slowly reducing the pace.

The Mercedes Twitter feed captured some footage of Hamilton in the new W08 model:

With the clock ticking down in the session, the Mercedes team decided to show off their raw speed, with Hamilton emerging for a dart on the supersoft compound and posting an impressive time of one minute, 28.983 seconds, the fastest recorded in Barcelona so far this week before Raikkonen's sprint.

As noted by Gianlu D’Alessandro, the Ferrari team were making a few technical adjustments in the morning:

For some of the other teams' testing, the session wasn’t quite so straightforward. After issues with an oil system on Monday limited their running time, McLaren were having more reliability problems on Tuesday, this time with their engine, per BBC Sport’s Andrew Benson:

Sauber driver Antonio Giovinazzi also had to spend some time in the garage:

The most difficult morning was endured by Renault, though. Palmer was set to take to the cockpit for the team on Tuesday but was stranded for almost the entire four hours.

However, a late stop for Estaban Ocon meant a red flag and a subsequent extension. Palmer as a result, did manage to get behind the wheel for a couple of minutes.