Vettel fastest again in Spain

JEREZ, Spain - Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel was fastest for the second day in a row in Formula 1 testing in Spain but Mercedes again did the most laps despite a water leak on Lewis Hamilton's car.

Quadruple F1 champion Vettel, who moved from Red Bull at the end of last year, did 89 laps before rain swept in over the Jerez circuit and was almost a second faster than the rest.

Reigning champion Hamilton did 91 laps on his first day in the new Mercedes, ending the day fourth-fastest and adding to the whopping tally of 157 laps put in by his German team mate Nico Rosberg on Sunday.

FIRST APPEARANCE

Hamilton said: "The priority right now is to put in the laps, not set fast times, and there were lots of positives today. We got good mileage and I hope we'll get even more in the next two days."

Brazilian Felipe Nasr was second-fastest in a Ferrari-powered Sauber, Finland's Valtteri Bottas third in a Williams. Lotus made its first appearance of the season after arriving late and failing to get on track on Sunday, with Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado completing 41 laps in the new Mercedes-powered car.

McLaren had another tough day getting to grips with its new Honda-powered car. Fernando Alonso completed only six laps on Sunday then Jenson Button, 2009 champion, managed only seven on his first day at the wheel. His best, and completely unrepresentative, lap was more than 30 seconds slower than Vettel's fastest.

ROUTINE CHECKS

Red Bull suffered a setback when Russian Daniil Kvyat damaged the car's front wing, leaving the team without a replacement. Kvyat continued without the wing for several laps.

race engineering head Guillaume Rocquelin said: "As with everybody else the pressure to get the car ready on time for this test meant that we didn't have a replacement. However, there are plenty of routine checks that need to be done… systems checks that go on all the time in the background, so we could at least get through a lot of that work today (Monday), which is why we sent Dany out for some laps without recording a time."

Red Bull said a replacement wing would arrive in time for Tuesday.