Mercedes and Ferrari had noteworthy begins to pre-season testing as Red Bull and McLaren hit inconvenience. Lewis Hamilton was quickest as Mercedes finished 152 laps with both their drivers at Circuit de Catalunya.
Hamilton was 0.113 seconds speedier than Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari, which likewise ran dependably and utilized the slower medium tire with the Mercedes on the delicate. By differentiation, the mileage of Red Bull and McLaren was constrained by repeating unwavering quality issues in Barcelona. Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas, a trade for the now-resigned best on the planet Nico Rosberg, was 6th quickest. “It has been a good day, a positive day for the team,” Hamilton said. “Lots of laps and information gained so we can try to improve the car.”
He said: “The G forces are definitely higher. The load on the drivers is a considerable amount more than before. It is a lot more physical.
“I was always trying to pick up the speed through the corners and you have to drive a little bit different. It is a beast. It is so much better than last year. Normally you have a lot of degradation in these tyres but these ones don’t. “But there is not a lot of performance at the beginning of the tyre. They are very consistent, hard tyres. There is not a big difference from early on to later. There is a bit of a drop-off but not massive.”
The main day of pre-season testing is about resolving issues and starting to see how the cars function. In that capacity, no team starts by attempting to set the quickest conceivable lap times. At this stage, mileage is critical, which is the reason the truncated days endured by Red Bull and McLaren are terrible news with just eight days of running before the begin of the season. “We are disappointed, we are sad to not be able to run,” Alonso said. “We are aware of the time we lost. We have four days for each driver before the championship starts so it is not ideal. But it is the way it is and all we can do is learn from it and concentrate and try to recover the time.”
