Barcelona F1 test: Sebastian Vettel fastest again on day two

The Ferrari driver's leading time of 1m22.810s was set on the new ultra-soft tyre compound just before the lunch break in Barcelona.

He focused on long runs in the afternoon and brought out the third red flag of the day when he pulled off track at Turn 3 with five minutes remaining.

It was the second successive day Vettel set the pace with the German running all of the Pirelli compounds apart from the hards as he clocked 126 laps, nearly double his Monday tally.

However, it was Mercedes that had the most productive day again in terms of mileage, with Nico Rosberg's first run in the car achieving an impressive 172 laps.

Sergio Perez, Valtteri Bottas, Fernando Alonso, Max Verstappen and Marcus Ericsson, running the 2015-spec Sauber, were the other drivers to pass the 100 lap-mark.

Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo was second quickest, 0.715s off the pace after also trying the ultra-softs, with 112 laps under his belt.

Perez used the super-softs to go third quickest, 0.840s adrift, with Rosberg two seconds off the pace in fourth, having focused on long runs in the afternoon.

Ericsson was fifth ahead of Esteban Gutierrez, who had an encouraging day for Haas with 79 relatively untroubled laps.

Bottas was seventh for Williams ahead of Pascal Wehrlein and Alonso, who managed more laps on Tuesday than he achieved in the whole of 2015 pre-season testing.

Jolyon Palmer, who finished 10th quickest, pulled off the track in the afternoon with a turbo problem on his 42nd lap to bring out the red flag and curtail Renault's running.

Verstappen, who was responsible for the second red flag of the day when he also stopped out on track, propped up the timesheets for Toro Rosso.

DAY TWO TIMES