The end of Day1 of the first test in Barcelona went well and while McLaren had a wheel nut issues prompting a beached car in the gravel, the car was doing what Fernando Alonso asked of it and that’s a big gain in my book. McLaren’s Zak Brown said it cost them about a half hour of running but not a big deal.
The other big winners were Renault who said early on that they would be focusing on reliability this season and that prompted some concern from Red Bull (powered by Renault) as to just how competitive the power unit would be. regardless, times are important of course but in my mind, the key indicator is going to be total laps and reliability. Why? Because the teams only have three engines for the entire season.
Equally positive was Toro Rosso who seemed to avoid the issues McLaren had last year and drove a strong 93 laps. They may have been off the pace but Honda getting mileage is critical right now. That’s a 198 laps for the Red Bull empire in total.
Ferrari and Mercedes set similar lap counts and perhaps one could argue, close lap times which could bode well for a close battle but it is early days yet.
| POS | DRIVER | CAR | TIME | GAP | LAPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull/Renault | 1m20.179s | – | 105 |
| 2 | Valtteri Bottas | Mercedes | 1m20.349s | 0.170s | 58 |
| 3 | Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari | 1m20.506s | 0.327s | 80 |
| 4 | Nico Hulkenberg | Renault | 1m20.547s | 0.368s | 73 |
| 5 | Carlos Sainz | Renault | 1m22.168s | 1.989s | 26 |
| 6 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1m22.327s | 2.148s | 25 |
| 7 | Fernando Alonso | McLaren/Renault | 1m22.354s | 2.175s | 51 |
| 8 | Brendon Hartley | Toro Rosso/Honda | 1m22.371s | 2.192s | 93 |
| 9 | Lance Stroll | Williams/Mercedes | 1m22.452s | 2.273s | 46 |
| 10 | Romain Grosjean | Haas/Ferrari | 1m22.578s | 2.399s | 55 |
| 11 | Marcus Ericsson | Sauber/Alfa Romeo | 1m23.408s | 3.229s | 63 |
| 12 | Nikita Mazepin | Force India/Mercedes | 1m25.628s | 5.449s | 22 |
| 13 | Sergey Sirotkin | Williams/Mercedes | 1m44.148s | 23.969s | 28 |
I’m going out on a limb but it looks like the RB, MB, F are going to be the front runners, and not in that order.
Lets hope those you listed and some others can mix things up at the front this year!
Hopefully a fifth championships for both the constructors, and drivers titles for Mercedes in 2018.
Hopefully a fifth championship for both the constructors, and driver’s titles for Mercedes in 2018.
By my math (I had to take my shoes off) but STR Honda did almost half the laps In 1 day than McLaren Honda did in the entire first test last year (210 if memory serves). You’re gonna hear some shenanigans theories reeeeeaaall soon….
New problem for Zekspeak, as soon as his number one driver came up behind a Honda/Toro Rosso he started seeing red.
Fernando did 51 laps? Isn’t that about the total of laps for both cars last year?
I don’t know if it is all the HALOs or another year of hybrids, but I am just not excited about all this shit like I used to be.
Your Vitamin F1 levels might be low Nigel.
You may need to increase your intake of TPF supplements, these are available in tablet (and laptop) format ;-)