Bottas tops morning session as Ferrari hits trouble

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Valtteri Bottas topped the timesheets Wednesday morning in Bahrain on the second and final day of in-season testing at Sakhir.

Mercedes continued a programme initiated yesterday with Lewis Hamilton and centered around tyre degradation on long runs and aero work.

Bottas was relentless all morning, clocking in with 78 laps and a best time of 1m 31.771, comfortably ahead of Force India's Esteban Ocon who will hand over the pink car to Sergio Perez for this afternoon.

The Finn brought out a red flag however when his W08 stopped at Turn 4 just before ending his morning session.

Sebastian Vettel was fourth fastest just behind Toro Rosso's Dany Kvyat but only accomplished a handful of laps as the Ferrari remained parked in its garage for the better part of the morning following the detection of leaks associated with some internal components.

The problem imposed on the Scuderia's crew a dismounting of the SF70H's power unit which was reassembled in time for Vettel to add a few laps to his tally.

Gary Paffet was back behind the wheel of an F1 car for the first time since 2013, with the Williams development driver running fifth fastest, ahead of McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne.

Contrary to Oliver Turvey yesterday, Vandooren was awarded 49 trouble-free laps, something of a major achievement these days at McLaren-Honda.

Magnussen, Sirotkin, Gasly and Weherlein all completed their respective programmes without any drama.

GALLERY: All the action from the Day 2 in-season testing at Bahrain

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