Morning summary: Sebastian Vettel tops the timesheet

Sebastian Vettel sets the pace after the first morning of testing in 2019! After three hours of running, he tops the leaderboard with a 1:18.425. Follow our liveblog here!

In contrast to last season's snowy weather, the teams and drivers have been rewarded with clear skies and bright sunshine as the first runs of 2019 are completed for all except Williams.

Valtteri Bottas was first out on track after a desperate dash out of the garage. But it was Vettel's Ferrari who soon topped the leaderboard.

During the morning, there were just two red flag incidents. Kimi Raikkonen ran wide and put the car in gravel just five minutes into the proceedings, while Romain Grosjean later stopped out on track due to a fuel pressure loss.

Red Bull troubles?

It took an age for Max Verstappen to emerge out of the garage to have a real crack at a timed lap. After his installation lap, the Dutchman sat in the garage for a long period of time and it looked like the mechanics were working on something.

Was it the engine? Who knows? But once the RB15 went out on track, it seemed to perform well. Verstappen tallied up 19 laps in a decent stint with a time of 1:21:808. Verstappen returned to the track for a second stab and moved into second place with a time of 1:20.174.

Ferrari laying a marker down on Mercedes?

During pre-season, it's hard to understand exactly what the teams are running with/aiming for. However, with Vettel topping both the time and the lap count, they've done some eye-catching stuff.

Meanwhile, Mercedes put in plenty of laps. Bottas started to make serious lap times towards midday and moved up to third with a 1:20.285.

#F1 3 hours into #HappyTesting and here are the laptimes at 12pm CET (Courtesy of @GPToday ) #MsportXtra pic.twitter.com/Np6ILB7bmI

— #MsportXtra (@MsportXtra) February 18, 2019