Vettel tops in Barcelona testing

German Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel posted the quickest time on the first day of the latest round of pre-season Formula One testing yesterday. The World champion produced a time of one min 24.374sec around the Barcelona circuit to come ahead of Spaniard Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari.


Sebastian Vettel

Vettel's Red Bull team had not topped the testing timesheets since the first day of running in 2011 but a fastest lap of one minute 24.374 seconds eased some fears over the pace of the new RB6. The German was not very active during the morning as the track dried out from overnight rain, but his late run bettered Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso by a huge 1.111s.u00a0

But despite taking top spot, Vettel was left frustrated overall as problems in the morning meant was not able to record as many laps as he would have liked. "Unfortunately, we didn't complete many laps today as we had a long break - longer than expected," he told Sky Sports.

"It wasn't anything big -- nothing broke -- but at the test if you think there might be a problem then you'd rather take the car apart and check. "The boys did their best and we still got some runs towards the end of the day. The car feels good and hopefully we'll do more tomorrow," he added.