As testing gets underway in Spain, Sebastian Vettel led time charts for the morning session. While that may be good news for Ferrari fans, the real news is that Lewis Hamilton did twice as many laps in the same time period running 66 to Vettel’s 36.
Laps, in the very first test session of a season, are a real milestone for any of the new cars. Teams are looking for reliability, lack of issues or niggles that end races and it’s a good sign when the car is on song and running lots of laps in the first test session.
Williams were able to pound out 43 laps but newcomers, Haas F1, only managed 13 until a front wing failure occurred. That’s not what they wanted but thankfully they feel like they have a good idea of what caused the situation. Romain Grosjean explained to the press that it’s not a huge deal and solvable.
Manor’s Pascal Wehrlein only managed 8 laps but perhaps a slightly better story is that McLaren’s Jenson Button managed 35 laps in what appeared to be a trouble-free run. That’s a bit of a relief from last year’s challenging test session for the folks from Woking.
| Pos | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |   Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | 1:24.939 | 36 |
| 2 |   Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1:25.409 | 66 |
| 3 |   Valtteri Bottas | Williams | 1:26.091 | 43 |
| 4 |   Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull | 1:26.704 | 20 |
| 5 |   Carlos Sainz | Toro Rosso | 1:27.180 | 35 |
| 6 | Jenson Button | McLaren | 1:27.691 | 35 |
| 7 |   Marcus Ericsson | Sauber | 1:28.165 | 36 |
| 8 |   Romain Grosjean | Haas | 1:28.399 | 13 |
| 9 |   Alfonso Celis Jr | Force India | 1:29.406 | 21 |
| 10 | Jolyon Palmer | Renault | 1:31.351 | 15 |
| 11 | Pascal Wehrlein | Manor | 1:35.637 | 8 |
Not bad for Haas. Everyone else already has data here so regardless of fuel loads, practice strategy, etc, being that close to some of the midfield teams had to be a sigh of relief.
Looks like ex Lotus/ now Renault is going to have a tough year.
Here’s the lap totals so far from the rest of the day.
Hamilton, 152
Ericsson, 85
Button, 79
Ricciardo, 78
Vettel, 69
Bottas, 69
Sainz, 55
Celis, 50
Wehrlein, 47
Grosjean, 31
Palmer, 28
So it looks like Haas did get a good bit of running done latter in the day. I’d say that’s a huge milestone for them.
And they weren’t DFL. That’s a huge success.
+1 for the use of the term DFL.