Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton ensured Ferrari left testing with a morale-boosting final day at Barcelona’s private event on Friday.
Sources have confirmed to ESPN that Hamilton set a 1:16.348 late on Friday, marginally quicker than the 1:16.445 produced by George Russell and Mercedes on Thursday, to mark the conclusion of F1’s behind-closed-doors five-day test, with two more to follow next month in Bahrain.
As always so early in testing, headline times can be misleading and the nature of F1’s behind-closed-doors test means key data, such as which tyres laps were set on and at what time of the day, can be difficult to come by.
Of more encouragement to Ferrari, a team plagued by unreliability in 2005, will be that it had another solid day of mileage, with Hamilton and Charles Leclerc combining for 145 laps across the day.
On top of that, Ferrari engine customer Haas bounced back from what had been a disappointing second day of testing earlier this week with a mammoth 195 laps across the day, with Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon alternating duties either side of lunch. That was the single-biggest daily tally recorded by any team this week and far in excess of three race distances of the Spanish Grand Pix, held at the Barcelona circuit.
Reigning world champions McLaren also had a solid day of mileage, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri combining for 166 laps between them, while also dipping into the 1:16s with a time 0.25s slower than Hamilton’s — the usual caveats apply.
Aston Martin completed just four laps on Thursday after a delayed start to their preseason, but fared better Friday in terms of mileage, with Fernando Alonso completing 61 overall.
However, sources told ESPN Aston Martin never looked like it was chasing lap times, with a blue flashing light on the back of its car to indicate to rival teams its car was not driving at full power as it ran in lower engine modes. Aston Martin’s big-spending operation has focused all of its resources on this regulation change and that has included a new engine deal with Honda.
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Mercedes, who completed their allotted three days of testing on Thursday so did not run on Friday, have left the test as the consensus early preseason favourite due to how quickly they were able to settle into a groove and the laps they were able to complete, while appearing to be comfortably quick before the real search for one-lap performance begins during February’s two Bahrain tests.
Mercedes customer team Alpine completed a further 121 laps through Pierre Gasly on Friday to push the mileage counter up even higher.
That said, multiple teams will head to the Middle East in good shape. The feared raft of reliability issues many feared would overshadow this new set of aerodynamic and engine regulations — which what prompted F1’s decision to agree to a behind-closed-doors test in the first place — never materialised.
Four-time world champion Max Verstappen returned to the Red Bull car, which had missed Wednesday and Thursday after teammate Isack Hadjar crashed out on Tuesday afternoon, and completed 118 laps.
Red Bull’s impressive start to testing was name-checked by Russell at the start of the week — the former world champions have taken on a whole new engine project in conjunction with Ford but there do not seem to have been an major reliability woes so far. Verstappen’s quickest time was 1.2 seconds off Hamilton’s, but the real performance runs will come in Bahrain.
Audi enjoyed their best day of the week so far, with 148 laps set between Nico Hülkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto, while Valtteri Bottas completed 54 laps for Cadillac.
F1 will continue with two three-day tests in Bahrain next month before the Australian Grand Prix on March 8.
