Daniil Kvyat turned heads as he put Toro Rosso at the top of the timesheets with a late run on Day 3 in Spain.
The Russian bolted on a set of the C5 Pirelli tyres, the softest compound in the range, and beat Kimi Raikkonen’s morning benchmark with a 1m17.704s in the final half an hour.
Alfa Romeo’s new recruit was the only other driver to use the equivalent of last year’s Hypersoft rubber and coincidentally also the pair are the only drivers to have broken the 1m18’s mark this week.
Daniel Ricciardo hopped into the Renault for the afternoon and, after initially focusing on longer runs, put on a set of C4 Pirellis and moved upto third, four-tenths off the leading pace.
Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari might have been overhauled on the standings, but the fourth best time on a set of C3 tyres with 134 laps to the German’s name still marks a very positive day of testing.
Red Bull is also starting to close the gap as Max Verstappen finished six-tenths off the best lap by Vettel on the C3 compound this week in fifth putting another 109 laps on the Honda-powered RB15.
Nico Hulkenberg’s morning best kept him in sixth for Renault with the two Haas drivers of Romain Grosjean and Pietro Fittipaldi seventh and eighth.
Though the two drivers combined for 117 laps across the day, the American team was responsible for all three red flags as a result of reliability issues.
McLaren made a steady start in the morning but Carlos Sainz made up for it with a race simulation in the afternoon and managing 90 laps in total on another solid day for the British team.
Racing Point’s subdued winter continues with Sergio Perez 10th fastest and only completing 67 laps in the RP19.
Mercedes too might be known for not pushing performance in pre-season, but it’s still strange to see Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton effectively bottom of the timesheet in 11th and 12th despite amassing a remarkable 182 laps on Wednesday.
Williams finally got the FW42 on track too, with George Russell conducting an effective shakedown with 23 laps and a best time almost five seconds off the rest of the field.
A full look at the standings can be seen below:
Another fascinating day of testing creating yet more questions about how the pecking order is shaking up and now they have one more day this week to complete their programs before the break when initial evaluations can be made.
