F1 pre-season testing kicks off at Barcelona

Formula One’s new regulations have resulted in an array of vastly different cars, despite even more limitations on bodywork design. Today, those 10 cars start their 6 days pre-season testing, the first three of which at Circuit De Catalunya-Barcelona.

Sunny skies greeted F1, resulting in most drivers venturing out immediately as the lights went green. In fact, George Russel was so eager he left the pit box before 9:00, resulting in him taking to the track first with his new Mercedes W13. One hour later, Mercedes were already up to 20 laps, topping the leaderboard in terms of mileage and third fastest on the timing screen.

Ferrari on the other hand saw Leclerc go fastest in the first hour, although mainly focusing on aerodynamic work thanks to a huge rearward rake fitted behind the diffuser over the entire width of the car.

McLaren and Alpine were a bit less active in the first hour but didn’t appear to encounter any issues, despite Alpine saying beforehand they had focused entirely on performance. The French is also the only one with a very big redesign of its engine, so the team will be very keen to analyse engine behaviour on track, and validate cooling solutions before the power is turned up.

The top three teams went on to have busy mornings, resulting in Ferrari topping the timesheet with a 1:20.165 and a total of 79 laps. George Russell made it 77 for Mercedes and Max Verstappen, despite a sidestep through the gravel completed 80 laps in his Red Bull RB18. None of these teams appeared to have any difficulty, obviously helped by the relative lack of regulation changes for the engine department.

Williams’ Nicholas Latifi did 66 laps while Norris, Vettel and Alonso were in the low 50’s. Mazepin only managed 18 laps due to a coolant leak midway through the session that needed fixing before running could continue.

At Alfa Romeo Racing, Robert Kubica completed the morning session with a camo coloured helmet, exactly as its car before its livery gets unveiled later this week. The team said midway in the morning they were suffering some electrical issues, but “noting unexpected”, and they were still on their running plan. Whether they were targeting only 9 laps in the first four hours of testing would however be quite surprising.

Leclerc, therefore, topped the times at noon, three tenths faster than Norris in the McLaren MCL36 and another additional three tenths ahead of George Russell for Mercedes.