Lewis Hamilton sent a warning to Mercedes’ rivals with a series of fastest laps to end the first pre-season test in Barcelona.
While the afternoon session began with a wet tyre test as the circuit was soaked over lunch, it took just 90 minutes for the drivers to once again be back on slicks.
But it wasn’t until the final 20 minutes that the timing screens began to come alive with Hamilton initially beating teammate George Russell’s morning benchmark on the C4 Pirelli tyres.
Then the seven-time world champion switched to the C5’s and went 0.003s quicker to post his eventual best time of 1m19.138s.
However, Hamilton had several other laps that would have been faster had he not backed off in the final sector and his potential best lap was a mid-1m18s.
He only improves by 0.003s to a 1:19.138 as he lost a bit of time in the final sector. Hook up his three best sectors though and he’s on a 1:18.6 #F1 #F1Testing
— Chris Medland (@ChrisMedlandF1) February 25, 2022
Lewis also tied with Alex Albon for the most laps by a single driver with 94, just ahead of Carlos Sainz in third with 94 for Ferrari.
Back to the lap times and Russell’s morning best remained good enough for second, making it a Mercedes 1-2 to end the first test.
Red Bull was not too far behind with Sergio Perez third on the C4 tyre and Max Verstappen fourth on the C3 compound, six-tenths slower than Hamilton.
Sebastian Vettel continued Aston Martin’s solid performance in fifth despite the team not running in the afternoon after an oil leak caused a fiery end to the German’s morning.
Vettel was also the odd-one-out as the two Ferraris, two Williams’ and two McLarens filled P6-P11.
3⃣4⃣ laps strong. ? #F1Testing pic.twitter.com/HWdDzTWlhx
— Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team (@AstonMartinF1) February 25, 2022
Fernando Alonso was 12th after only managing 12 laps due to a hydraulic problem that caused a smoky first red flag in the morning.
Rookie Guanyu Zhou caused two red flags during his AM run in the Alfa Romeo before passing over to teammate Valtteri Bottas, who was the slowest overall.
Contact with the barrier at Turn 5 for Pierre Gasly ended AlphTauri’s test early, with Haas also failing to run after lunch due to a suspected leak on their now all-white VF-22 due to the fallout from the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
So a new for F1 but the same names at the top at the end of the first test in 2022, whether that’s a sign of things to come or if Ferrari and/or McLaren return to the front in Bahrain, we’ll have to wait and see!
