Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen continued to ramp up the pace from Monday’s running after setting a blistering 1m20.960s on the soft tyre.
The SF70H in the hands of Raikkonen managed the days running with little to no issues and was well on the pace once the Finn was up to speed, with more than 100 laps completed.
Times are expected to continue to tumble as the 2007 Formula 1 world champion was less than half a tenth ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s time on supersoft tyres.
Hamilton managed 66 laps in the morning which is yet another race distance under his belt, this included the first runs on the supersoft tyre.
Mercedes brought out an interesting new T-wing on the rear of the car, a second plane had been added on top of the original.
Valtteri Bottas took over driving duties from Hamilton for the afternoon session as scheduled, completing 89 laps which included a full race distance as the Finn continued to rack up the mileage in the W08.
However, Bottas nearly ended his day early with this spin at Turn 9.
Twitter: .@ValtteriBottas
laps this afternoon
… it wasn’t all plain sailing
#F1Testing #F1 https://t.co/AERmDr2ufX (@F1)
After completing 155 laps altogether, it brings Mercedes’ total lap haul to more than 300 over two days which is over four and a half race distances of the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit.
McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne took to the track early on, only to come to a halt at the pit entry after just two installation laps, but was quickly back out on track to get some laps on the MCL32.
As the morning wore on, Honda’s woes continued to mount as more issues arose with a loss of power to the power unit, leading to a full change before the afternoon session got underway
The Belgian driver still didn’t get to make an appearance until late in the afternoon due to the lengthy change completing only a handful of laps.
Kevin Magnussen managed more than 100 laps in the Haas after a slow start his day’s efforts, proving that two straight day’s running wasn’t going to hamper the Dane’s determination, finishing fourth fastest topped off a great day for the former Renault and McLaren driver.
In Stroll’s first run in the new FW40, he took a spin at Turn 9 early on causing a brief red flag, but the young Canadian quickly got moving again under his own steam, no explanation had been given by the team as to how it happened thus far.
Despite the innocuous spin, it had caused enough damage to the car to halt running for the day due to a lack of spare parts, Stroll had only managed to achieve 12 laps which won’t help at all as he acclimatises to F1.
Renault made a small appearance in the morning session completing an installation lap, their morning delay was due to new parts being fitted that arrived overnight, as the green flag started the afternoon session, Palmer quickly got to work with a busy program managing over 50 laps without a glitch.
Esteban Ocon finally made it out of the garage halfway through the morning session as the team tried to fix an issue from Monday relation to the exhaust.
However just before the lunch hour, the VJM10 stopped out on track at Turn 10 with smoke pouring from the body work.
The Force India team managed to get the car fixed for the afternoon session where Ocon managed to get more than a race distance under his belt, eventually finishing fifth fastest.
Unfortunately for Sauber, they did not get any laps on the board in the morning, they experienced problems with the 2016 Ferrari power unit.
A full power unit change was in order for the Swiss team in preparations for the afternoon session, Giovinazzi did manage to get out on track to complete 51 laps in the afternoon, helping to recover the lost time from the morning.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen managed 31 laps before lunchtime, however due to the team making changes to the car for the afternoon where the Dutchman ramped up the pace, eventually clocking up over 70 laps and finished third fastest overall.
Daniil Kvyat flew very much under the radar completing 68 laps throughout Tuesday’s test, with no reported issues throughout the day despite a lack of afternoon running with the STR12 stuck in the garage, the Russian ended up sixth fastest.
It is still far too early to tell where everybody stands within the pecking order, especially as Raikkonen has gone fastest on a harder tyre compound than Hamilton managed.
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