Barcelona Test 2 Day 3: Ferrari tops final day’s times

Charles Leclerc

Despite bringing out a late red flag when he broke down on course, Charles Leclerc ended fastest by a wide margin in his #16 Ferrari Thursday – the penultimate day of preseason F1 testing.

In his final appearance for Ferrari ahead of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Leclerc logged 138 laps and set the pace to ensure the Italian squad recovered from its truncated running after Sebastian Vettel crashed on Wednesday.

The Monegasque’s 1m16.231s remained unbeatable in the afternoon, though his running ended prematurely when his SF90 broke down on his 139th tour, leaving Ferrari with some reliability concerns heading into the final day.

Despite his pace proving Ferrari's place as the pre-season favorite, Leclerc said he felt there was even more performance that could be unlocked from the SF90.

"Obviously like every team we are not flat out," he said. "There is still some margin. There is a bit in myself, I still have to learn.

"I get more comfortable with the car lap after lap, and also the car itself. So it is looking good for now."

Leclerc said his positive feeling in the Ferrari had not changed since last week's encouraging first run, and said the only thing he wanted to tick off before Melbourne was completing a full race simulation.

"The car feels comfortable, from day one the balance is pretty nice, and it hasn't changed today," he said.

"It is a positive day, especially after the lack of running yesterday. It was a good morning for us and it is good for us to be on top, but it doesn't mean anything."

Alexander Albon was the only other driver to post a sub-1m17s lap as he completed over 100 laps for Toro Rosso and finished six tenths down on Leclerc’s benchmark, with McLaren’s Lando Norris a further two tenths back in third.

Mercedes is still sandbagging running the rock hard C2 tires and have yet to show how fast they really are.

Quotes

Lance Stroll:
“It’s been another positive day in the car and a good way to finish my pre-season program. We covered a lot of kilometers today – the most I’ve done on a single day all winter – and now I am really looking forward to going racing. We are going to keep learning about our new car, both tomorrow on our last day with Sergio in the car and back at base, and we are going to bring the best possible package to Melbourne. It’s really tough to predict where we stand once we start racing: everyone is working on different programs, but I start the season with a positive mindset."

Alexander Albon (Car 23):
“I’m quite happy with how winter testing went as I was able to do a lot of laps and maximize my time in the car. It’s still early days and we won’t know until Melbourne what everyone else has been working on, but I think we can be satisfied with how everything turned out the past four days. We managed to have another day cracking the 100-lap mark, so that’s a testament to the team’s hard work and the reliability from Honda. Coming into testing you always want to get the most mileage as possible and we’ve done that, so it’s been a lot of learning and getting comfortable with the car – something I wouldn’t have been able to do if we weren’t reliable. Overall, we’re in a good position with the car and there’s been no nasty surprises. There’s still a few things we need to tick off tomorrow before we finish testing, but it’s been a successful pre-season test as we were able to trial many things to see what works well for us. It was a great job by the team to get a good baseline for the car so that we could build on it throughout the two weeks."

Jody Egginton (Deputy Technical Director):
“As this is the final day of winter testing for Alex, the program was focused towards qualifying and race simulations whilst also making best use of the remaining time for further background and aero test items. As one would expect given his approach so far in testing, Alex made good progress in the qualifying simulation, adapting well to each compound and circuit evolution. The afternoon race simulation, although not fully completed due to a red flag, included the use of the C1 compound. Alex could therefore achieve further experience of long run tire optimization and this demonstrated his increasing confidence with the car. It also provided some very useful tire data for the engineers to review and act on for the final day of testing. In terms of pace we are reasonably satisfied, even if tire wear and graining has been a topic and something we expect to be a challenge for all teams at some events in 2019, hence we have taken the opportunity to work on minimizing its effects here."

Toyoharu Tanabe (Honda F1 Technical Director):
“Alex Albon has now completed his pre-season testing in these two tests that saw him drive a Formula 1 car for the first time. He completed just under 500 laps in his four days in the cockpit. That represents a significant contribution in terms of our PU development work and we are now looking forward to his debut race. Tomorrow is our final track session before Melbourne and we hope to end this test on a positive note."

Lewis Hamilton
Today has been a good day – lots of mileage, which is great for us. It has probably been one of the most positive days for us, we've really learned quite a lot. We've been able to apply our learnings from the morning to the afternoon, so I'm looking forward to seeing how Valtteri felt, but the car looked like it was in a better place. Our understanding of the W10 is continuously growing so it was definitely a positive day.

Valtteri Bottas
We got a lot of laps in today which is always good. I did a race simulation which was interrupted by the red flag, but it confirmed the progress we've made since last week. We're getting more and more prepared for Melbourne, but there's room for improvement and still a few question marks on where we stand compared to the competition. We're focusing on our performance; the entire team is pushing really hard and keeps improving the car and that's all that matters. We need to maximize the last day of testing as it will be our final chance to try out a few things ahead of Melbourne. Today was positive and I'm hoping for another good day tomorrow.

James Allison
Today was a very productive day, either side of a trouble-free race distance we did a lot of good investigative work and in the race simulation itself, unlike yesterday where we failed to make the tires live, we had good tire behavior across all three stints. We look forward to tomorrow where we will be investigating the range of tire compounds and focusing more on single lap pace.

Antonio Giovinazzi:
“Today was a bit more challenging, as we faced some issues during our session. Nevertheless, the team is positive and motivated to continue learning about the car and our strengths. Tomorrow we have a final session of testing on track and aim to find some good developments. I look forward to starting my first race weekend soon."

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: It was another great day weather wise, and again a very ambitious program with three segments. We ran some more aerodynamic measurements in the morning, this time with our very largest rake assembly. We spent the second part of the morning on qualifying practice, running four sets of new tires at low fuel. In the afternoon we focused on a race simulation mixed with a range of tests which went generally to plan despite the red flag interruptions. Overall, we achieved some high mileage with great feedback from George, and we will be doing more of the same with Robert tomorrow.

George Russell: I’m definitely very happy with the number of laps we have done, but at the end of the day it is all about the laptimes and we still have some time to find. We have made a big step from when I jumped in the car on Tuesday, after Robert was in the car yesterday, and hopefully when he jumps in the car tomorrow we will find another step. We understand the issues, we recognize that and are doing everything we can to rectify them. We have work to do but I am still very focused, motivated and I am very much looking forward to Australia.

Day 7 of 8 Final Times

C1=Hardest Tire
C5=Softest Tire