Special envoy to Barcelona
We take the same and start again. Undisputed mistress of Formula 1 for six years - and as many driver and manufacturer titles - Mercedes announced the color on the first day of winter testing in Barcelona on Wednesday. A little less than a month from the first of the 22 meetings of 2020, on March 15 in Melbourne, the Silver Arrows already loot the top of the timesheets. Figures whose importance must, of course, be put into perspective since these two three-day sessions in Catalonia (19-20-21 then 26-27-28 February) are used - as their name suggests - to carry out tests. The priority of the stables is therefore not to perform at all costs but rather to land in the land of kangaroos with as much certainty as possible.
The imposing grids of data collection probes and the additional cameras mounted on certain single-seaters this Wednesday constantly remind the laboratory aspect of the Catalan meeting. Despite everything, at the dawn of an exercise which could strongly resemble its predecessor due to an almost unchanged regulation - pending the revolution of 2021 -, the German team, which performed the most laps this Wednesday ( 173), always seems to capitalize on the advantage it has over the competition.
Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas confirmed this by signing the two best times of the first day on the Catalonia circuit. To the 1'17''313 successful in the morning by the Finn (79 laps completed, medium tires), the six-time British world champion responded in the afternoon with the only time of the day under the 1'17 bar ( 1'16''976, 94 laps on hard tires). On a single-seater with a Mercedes engine and a strong Germanic inspiration, the Mexican Sergio Pérez is the closest to the infernal duo (1'17''375), which will delight the owner of Racing Point, the Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, incidentally father of the driver # 2 of the Lance Stroll team, less in sight on Wednesday (10th, 1'18''282). Before renaming his team Aston Martin next year - he has just taken control of the legendary British manufacturer - the businessman aspires to find in 2020 the title of "best of the rest", obtained twice the time of Force India (2016, 2017), behind the Mercedes-Ferrari-Red Bull trio.
Optimism displayed in the Renault clan
A 4th place owned by McLaren to which Renault also aspires. After a rather disappointing 2019 (5th constructor, 4th place at Monza as the best result for Ricciardo), the Rhombus went to great lengths on the chassis side at Enstone to find its property sold last year. Newcomer Esteban Ocon (8th, 1'18''004, 56 laps) already appreciates the result: “We feel that the car is going much faster than before. There is a lot of grip this year (…) I think we will break all the time and the track records (of Renault) this year because it is really impressive ”. In turn on the track Wednesday afternoon, Daniel Ricciardo did slightly better (7th, 1'17''873, 56 laps). After a black 2019 year (2 pts in 21 GP), Williams may be seeing the end of the tunnel since George Russell did pretty well (9th, 1'18''168), his rookie teammate Nicholas Latifi too ( 12th, 1'18''382). The stakhanovist of the day is called Max Verstappen with 168 laps completed in Montmeló and the 4th fastest time at the end of the day (1'17''516). Scheduled Thursday on the Ferrari schedule, Charles Leclerc was finally on the track today to compensate for the absence of a suffering Sébastien Vettel. The Monegasque made 132 laps and finished 11th (1'18''289) of an inaugural day without any incident to report on the track.
Day one is complete! # F1Testingpic.twitter.com / 0iQ1XiHaA1
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