Sims caps off strong test for BMW

Alexander Sims put BMW Andretti on top once again as he took the fastest time in the final pre-season test session of the week, giving the German marque the advantage in four out of the six sessions.

Following heavy rainfall earlier in the day, the drivers were treated to sporadic bouts of sunshine in the afternoon and were able to make the most of a drying track as lap times tumbled.

The early stages had been led by Dragon Racing’s Antonio Fuoco, with the track consistently getting quicker he was soon outdone and eventually finished the session 11th fastest.

Jean-Eric Vergne took the second fastest time ahead of Mitch Evans, while rookie Pascal Wehrlein finished a strong pre-season for Mahindra Racing with fourth place ahead of Dragon’s Maximilian Günther.

Daniel Juncadella and Oliver Rowland, who are standing in at HWA Racelab and Nissan e.dams respectively, both managed to achieve a substantial number of laps between them, however the latter did encounter some reliability issues early in the afternoon.

There were a number of red flags throughout the day as a number of drivers were forced to pull over and stop the car, including Jerome d’Ambrosio, Nelson Piquet Jr and Felipe Massa.

Edoardo Mortara’s pre-season test came to a premature end as the Swiss-Italian was unable to leave the garage in the afternoon after suffering from technical issues.

The full results of the afternoon session can be found here.

The full results for Friday can be found here.