Sebastian Vettel has revealed Ferrari went beyond their original plan for Monday on an “unbelievable” first day of pre-season testing.
From the start, the German lit up the timing screens with a series of runs in the morning, setting an eventual best of 1m18.161s, only a second slower than the fastest time in Barcelona over the entire eight days of last year.
In the afternoon, the laps just continued to tick by and eventually, Vettel ended with 165 to his name, well over two race distances.
“We couldn’t have hoped for a better day. I think it was unbelievable,” he told the media in the paddock.
“The car was working really well, we had no issues slowing us down. We actually completed the program just the way we wanted. and we were even able to squeeze a little bit more out.”
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Vettel was keen to stress that the lap times themselves were “meaningless”, and having Carlos Sainz’s McLaren within 0.5s in second proved that.
However, in a year when the four-time world champion and the Scuderia are so desperate to finally beat Mercedes, it couldn’t have started much better.
“For now, I think huge compliments to everyone back in the factory. How they tackled the new rules and regulations and what they put on track today is very close to perfection on the first day of driving,” he claimed.
“The amount of laps that we did how the team was handling the car and obviously everything is more on the edge compared to last year car and tight and so on, what you’d imagine, but as I said no major dramas. So from that point of view, we were very, very well prepared.”
