Lewis Hamilton finishes the day fastest, as the new cars are given their first testing runs. With lap times already below the pole time from Catalunya in 2016, it looks as if the rule changes have made the cars faster as promised. Most teams had a trouble-free day, with Mercedes and Williams completing more than 100 laps each.
Vettel was the initial pace-setter, ending the morning fastest and just shy of the pole time for the 2016 Spanish GP. Meanwhile, McLaren had a disappointing start to testing, with an oil system issue costing them hours of running and they didn’t set a time until after lunch.
Ricciardo also stopped out on track with a sensor issue, but this was soon resolved and he headed back out. After lunch, however, a battery issue hit and cost further time. Fortunately this was resolved and he ended the day a respectable fifth.
Taking over from Bottas after lunch, Hamilton soon went below 1:22.000 and was briefly on top before being surpassed by both Vettel and Massa. However, by the end of the day the Mercedes was back on top once again with a 1:21.765. An impressive day for Ferrari saw Vettel just one tenth of this.
So, with day one of testing over what can we conclude? We know that the rule changes have made an impact on lap times, with the times set today significantly faster than at this stage last year. Aside from that, in terms of making comparisons between teams, it is too early to jump to conclusions but so far it must be said that Mercedes cannot be faulted.
- Hamilton – 1:21.765 (soft)
- Vettel – 1:21.878 (medium)
- Massa – 1:22.076 (soft)
- Magnussen – 1:22.894 (soft)
- Ricciardo – 1:22.926 (soft)
- Bottas – 1:23.169 (soft)
- Perez – 1:23.709 (soft)
- Sainz – 1:24.494 (medium)
- Hulkenberg – 1:24.784 (medium)
- Alonso – 1:24.852 (soft)
- Ericsson – 1:26.841 (medium)