Ricciardo puts Red Bull at the top of the timesheet!

Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo topped the timesheets mid-day, on the first day of pre-season testing in Barcelona.

The Aussie clocked in with 59 laps under his belt and the wheels of the team’s new RB14, and a best lap of 1m20.179.

Both Valtteri Bottas and Kimi Raikkonen were hot on the heels of their front-running rival however, with 0.327s covering the top three, nicely confirming at the outset the Red Bull-Mercedes-Ferrari hegemony.

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Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg was hard at work all morning, accumulating 73 laps of mileage – the most of any driver – and ending up fourth, just 0.368s adrift from the fastest time.

The session’s first red flag was caused by a mechanical wheel-nut failure on Fernando Alonso’s McLaren, an incident which deprived the team of three hours of track time.

Further down the pit lane, Toro Rosso and Brendon Hartley put its new STR13 through its paces, much to the pleasure of engine partner Honda which achieved more laps in the half-session that in an entiure day of running last year with McLaren.

Force India development driver Nikita Mazepin caused the morning’s only other red flag when he spun at Turn 4, a mishap which left the Russian at the bottom of the timesheets, just behind Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson.

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Testing will resume at 2:00pm, and you can follow the action LIVE here.

Pre-season test Day 1 – lunchtime

Pos Driver Team Time Laps Tyre

1
 Ricciardo
 Red Bull
 1:20.179
60
M

2
 Bottas
 Mercedes
 1:20.349
58
M

3
 Räikkönen
 Ferrari
 1:20.506
60
S

4
 Hülkenberg
 Renault
 1:20.547
73
S

5
 Hartley
 Toro Rosso
 1:22.371
72
S

6
 Stroll
 Williams
 1:22.452
46
S

7
 Grosjean
 Haas
 1:23.092
32
S

8
 Alonso
 McLaren
 1:24.202
10
SS

9
 Ericsson
 Sauber
 1:24.897
41
M

10
 Mazepin
 Force India
 1:25.628
22
M

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