Barcelona: Hamilton tops a closely fought tussle

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest of the week on the final day of pre-season testing at Barcelona, although it wasn't only in qualy style runs where his MP4-25 showed considerable pace.

In an exciting hour-long qualifying battle involving Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher, the McLaren driver posted a 1:20.427 to beat the week's best by 0.142s.

However, he wasn't the only driver to drop belong the previous best, which was set by Nico Hulkenberg on Friday, as by the close of the play, Mark Webber, Adrian Sutil and Massa were all quicker than the Williams driver.

Report: The final day of pre-season testing began under overcast skies with Michael Schumacher, Kamui Kobayashi, Adrian Sutil and Felipe Massa as the early pace-setters.

However, the session was stopped when Rubens Barrichello spun into the gravel at Turn 4 in the blustering wind.

Once underway again, it was Massa and Schumacher, both putting their cars through qualifying style runs, who vyed for the top honours with Massa eventually getting the upper hand before another red flag. This time it was Kobayashi who brought the session to a halt.

With the action resuming, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel joined the fight for the P1 slot as they too put their 2010 challengers through qualifying runs. Hamilton eventually took the early morning honours with a 1:20.472, the best time set at Barcelona this week.

All four drivers at the top of the leaderboard then switched their attention to long distance runs as 2010 regulations stipulate that all drivers qualifying in the top ten must start the race on the tyres with which they qualified.

Interestingly, all four, Hamilton, Massa, Vettel and Schumacher, lapped within a second of one another as they put in 12 to 18 lap runs. However, without their fuel load know one cannot read too much into those times.

Long distance runs were generally the focus of the afternoon with Hamilton starting in the 1:27s and working his way down to the 1:25s. Massa, on the other hand, started in the 1:26s, dropped to the 1:25s before returning to the 1:26s.

Further into their stints, Hamilton dropped to the 1:23s while Massa, on fresh rubber, broke into the 1:22s. Meanwhile, Schumacher, after 26 laps, was into the 1:24s and Robert Kubica the 1:25s.

Not everyone, though, was on a race sim with Mark Webber, who replaced his team-mate Vettel after the lunch break, taking second place on his qualifying run. Just 0.024s off Hamilton's lead time.

Sutil was another on the move, climbing to fourth place, 0.139s off the pace, as he swapped from long distance to shorter runs.

56 laps into his race simulation, Schumacher was in the 1:23s, however, he had to pull into the pits when the third red flag of the day was waved. Like the second, this belonged to Kobayashi, who stopped at Turn 2.

No sooner was the session restarted than it stopped again when Barrichello ground to a halt on his out lap with a hydraulic problem. And like Kobayashi, it was his second red flag of the day.

With 25 minutes remaining all the drivers excluding Kobayashi and Barrichello hit the track for their final run.

Schumacher continued with his race sim, dropping into the 1:22s before, yet again, testing was stopped. This time the red flag belonged to Heikki Kovalainen as his Lotus stopped at Turn Four.

The final pre-season test restarted with four minutes left with Hamilton, Webber, Massa, Sutil, Schumacher, Buemi, Kubica and di Grassi all venturing out. And, venturing back in as once again the red flags were waved.

Barcelona: Hamilton tops a closely fought tussle - Planet-F1 News from planet-f1.com