Sebastian Vettel admitted he was frustrated by a lack of track of time despite setting the pace on the opening day of F1 testing at Catalunya.

The Red Bull driver suffered a number of minor trips off track in the damp conditions that greeted teams during the morning, which led to the team carrying out a number of precautionary checks as a result.

Those checks took longer than expected which in turn meant Vettel was unable to return to the track until the closing moments of the session although he was still able to set the quickest time of the day with a late lap knocking Fernando Alonso off top spot.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t complete many laps today, as we had a long break – longer than expected,” he said.

“It wasn’t anything big, nothing broke, but at the test if you think there might be a problem then you’d rather take the car apart and check.

“The boys did their best and we still got some runs towards the end of the day – not as much as we’d like, but the car feels good and hopefully we’ll do more tomorrow.”

Head of race engineering Ian Morgan agreed with Vettel that it was frustrating to have lost time on track.

“It was frustrating today, as we lost some time making checks to the car during lunch,” he said. “It’s what testing is for, but we would have liked to complete more laps today.”