Formula One pays tribute to legendary John Surtees

FASTEST: Kimi Raikkonen FINNISH driver Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest time of pre-season testing as the Formula One world paid tribute to former champion John Surtees, who died on Friday.

“It’s very sad,” said three-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. “He was a legend of the sport.

“He did so much and he was such a lovely guy, so my thoughts and prayers go out to his family.”

Ferrari also paid tribute to 83-year-old Surtees, a Briton, the only man to win world championships in both Formula One and motorcycle grand prix racing after winning the title with Ferrari in 1964.

“Ferrari has lost one of drivers,” the Italian team said.

On the track, Ferrari enjoyed another encouraging day as Raikkonen edged to within three-tenths of the track record in 1min 18.634sec to register the fastest time of the day by nearly a second. The Finn didn’t have a completely troublefree day, though, as his running in the afternoon session was interrupted by a breakdown.

Hamilton claimed Ferrari were “bluffing” with their eye-catching testing times on Thursday and Mercedes may be keeping its greatest their powder dry for the first grand prix of the year in Melbourne, Australia, on March 26.

Valtteri Bottas was well over a second behind Raikkonen in fourth on the same supersoft tyre compound with Hamilton fifth fastest after taking over for the afternoon session.

However, the Mercedes pair logged over 100 laps as the defending world champions were the only team to complete more than 5 000km over the eight days of testing.

“The others look pretty quick so it looks like we’re going to have a battle on our hands,” said Hamilton. “The great thing is no one really knows. It looks very positive for Ferrari that’s for sure.”

Dutch wonderkid Max Verstappen was second fastest as Red Bull again showed that they look set to be the third force behind Mercedes and Ferrari this season.

Fernando Alonso and McLaren’s misery continued, though, as the two-time world champion twice broke down with the same electrical problems that saw Stoffel Vandoorne stop twice on Thursday.

Alonso eventually got 43 laps under his belt but was once again relegated to 11th fastest among the 13 drivers in action on the timesheets. — AFP