BMW's Sims tops first day of pre-season testing

Sims, who will make his FE debut in the upcoming campaign, topped the morning session at the Ricardo Tormo circuit with a time of 1m17.567s.

But Sims went even faster towards the end of the afternoon running when he set a 1m17.553s, as the majority of the drivers improved their best times in the second half of the day.

Andre Lotterer ended the day with the second fastest time - a 1m17.654s, which put him 0.101 seconds adrift of Sims.

Antonio Felix da Costa finished the day in third, having been second-fastest to his BMW team-mate in the morning and 0.167s adrift.

Audi pair Lucas di Grassi and Daniel Abt both spent the morning session completing shorter runs and ended the day fourth and fifth overall.

Jerome D'Ambrosio, only announced as a Mahindra Racing driver on Tuesday morning, was sixth for his new squad, one spot ahead of reigning FE champion Jean-Eric Vergne - who was one of only three drivers that drove in both sessions not to go quicker in the afternoon.

Sebastien Buemi finished the day with the eighth fastest time, 0.547s slower than Sims.

The Nissan e.dams driver also completed 16 laps in Alexander Albon's car in the afternoon.

Jose Maria Lopez was ninth for Dragon Racing, with FE newcomer Felipe Massa rounding out the top 10 for Venturi.

Long-time season four title contender Sam Bird was the highest place Virgin Racing driver in 11th, with his new team-mate Robin Frijns ending up in 14th place.

Ex-Formula 1 racer Pascal Wehrlein was 13th for Mahindra.

Mitch Evans and his Jaguar team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr both set their fastest times of the day in the morning and ended up 16th and 20th overall, with the latter completing a mammoth 27-lap stint just before the lunch break.

Evans also lost a significant chunk of his morning running due to a battery change.

Newly-crowned DTM champion and HWA driver Gary Paffett caused the first of the day's two red flags when he slid into the tight chicane that has been built three-quarters of the way down the start/finish straight to simulate the tighter confines of regular FE circuits.

The crash occurred with just over an hour of the morning session remaining, with Paffett rejoining in the afternoon after his car had been repaired to set the day's 18th quickest time.

Paffett's HWA team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne was 19th fastest, 3.47s slower than Sims, but did not complete a lap in the afternoon session.

Maximilian Gunther was the slowest driver to set a timed lap, with Albon and Antonio Fuoco, who is sharing the #6 Dragon Racing car with Gunther this week, not setting a time all day.

The brief second red flag period occurred mid-way through the afternoon running to secure a loose part of the chicane tyre wall.

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