Barcelona F1 test: Vettel quickest on second morning

The reigning world champion ended more than half a second clear of the chasing pack, having improved his own benchmark several times over the course of the morning's running.

His ultimate best, a 1m22.197s, came after a late one-lap run on Pirelli's soft compound.

Lewis Hamilton, getting his first taste of the Mercedes W04 at Barcelona, was Vettel's nearest challenger despite being more than 0.529s down the road.

Hamilton's focus appeared to be longer runs on the hard tyre, and it was on the orange compound that he set his fastest lap and the outright best in the final sector.

Sergio Perez, the man who replaced Hamilton at McLaren, came within 17 thousandths of a second of the Briton's run following his own late soft-tyre run.

Perez's late rally pushed Ferrari's Fernando Alonso down to fourth, the Spaniard having set his outright best with more than an hour of the session to run.

On his first day in the Williams FW35, Valtteri Bottas was the morning's second busiest, and fifth fastest, driver.

The Finn managed 53 laps before Williams elected to stop early, its aero programme complete.

That was in stark contrast to Lotus and Kimi Raikkonen, whose morning was massively restricted by a gearbox change.

The Finn managed just four laps, none of them timed, just one day after speaking of his frustration as a data issue limited Lotus's mileage.

Less than one second covered Daniel Ricciardo, Paul di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg in the fight for sixth, with the Toro Rosso man eventually claiming the honours.

That left Charles Pic and Max Chilton bringing up the rear of the field, ahead of the stricken Lotus.

Morning times

Pos  Driver              Team            Time       Gap     Laps        
 1.  Sebastian Vettel    Red Bull        1m22.197s          43
 2.  Lewis Hamilton      Mercedes        1m22.726s  +0.529  64
 3.  Sergio Perez        McLaren         1m22.743s  +0.546  35
 4.  Fernando Alonso     Ferrari         1m23.247s  +1.050  28
 5.  Valtteri Bottas     Williams        1m23.561s  +1.364  53
 6.  Daniel Ricciardo    Toro Rosso      1m23.718s  +1.521  46
 7.  Paul di Resta       Force India     1m23.971s  +1.774  41
 8.  Nico Hulkenberg     Sauber          1m24.638s  +2.441  39
 9.  Charles Pic         Caterham        1m26.985s  +4.788  52
10.  Max Chilton         Marussia        1m28.900s  +6.703  32
11.  Kimi Raikkonen      Lotus           -                   4