Barcelona Test 2 Day 1: Norris on top, then breaks (Update)

Lando Norris

UPDATE This article was updated with quotes and photos. See our full photo page from Day 5 (Week 2 Day 2) of testing.

02/26/19 Lando Norris topped the opening day of the second Formula 1 pre-season test in Barcelona on Tuesday as Mercedes lost most of its afternoon running to an issue on its new W10 car and Ferrari lost most of the morning with cooling issues.

Rookie Norris rose to the head of the timesheets with half an hour left in the day after putting in a lap on the C4 tires, recording a fastest time of 1m17.709s.

Norris' was six-thousandths of a second faster than Red Bull's Pierre Gasly, but Gasly was on harder C3 tires.

Despite finishing the day quickest, Norris' day came to an early end after his car stopped between Turn 2 and Turn 3 as he exited the pits following his fastest run, having also been sidelined through the morning by a loss of hydraulic pressure.

The only other red flag of the day came when Valtteri Bottas parked up at the side of the track during his first lap out on-track in the afternoon for Mercedes after an engine change in the morning.

Quotes

Sandbagging Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton
It's been a beautiful day here in Barcelona and it was great to see that even more fans turned out today. We got through our run program and the car was feeling relatively good. It was an improvement from last week which is a good step. The tires are also working a better now that the track temperature is a bit higher. We have to continue to analyze everything and keep pushing.

Valtteri Bottas
Unfortunately, after four days of flawless reliability last week, I spent most of the day waiting as we had an oil pressure issue on my first outlap and had to change the Power Unit. But I'm glad I still got to do a few laps, the team did a really good job to get the car out again; it was important to get a bit of a feel for the new aero package. My running was obviously very limited, but it seems like we've made improvements. We need to review everything in more detail tonight and I'm looking forward to continuing our program tomorrow morning.

James Allison
It was not exactly the day we hoped for, running for the first time with the bodywork kit that we expect to use in Melbourne, with a large part of the day lost to an oil pressure issue at lunchtime. Nevertheless, either side of that problem we did do some useful things, finding that the car behaves a little differently with the new package. We're looking forward very much to have a trouble-free day tomorrow to get a better feel for what it can do.

Sebastian Vettel
“It was a busy afternoon, but it was good to make up for the laps lost in the morning" – commented Sebastian at the end of the day – “We are still trying to understand the car, trying various set-ups. This afternoon, we also had a first go with the supersoft compound, just to get some more information. The next couple of days will be important for us".

Lance Stroll

Lance Stroll: “It was our smoothest day of testing so far and we completed some valuable mileage. The car felt good so I think we are heading in the right direction. These days are about building confidence and getting to grips with the new car, but also getting used to this new environment. I am getting on really well with the crew in the garage. They’re great people and everyone is working so hard. We ran on a mix of different tires today and tried a lot of test items. There’s a good atmosphere in the garage and I’m feeling pleased with the work we did today."

Tom McCullough, Performance Engineering Director:
“The car ran reliably all day, which allowed us to complete our testing plan. It was a good day that allowed us to catch up on some of the items we had missed last week. We worked through an aero test program in the morning, while in the afternoon we were able to focus more on rebalancing the car. We also had the first sample of the softer compounds Pirelli have introduced for this year. In general, we continued with our strong data-gathering program: there still a lot of work to do, but our understanding of the RP19 is increasing every time we run it. We need to keep doing that for the rest of the week."

Antonio Giovinazzi (car number 99):
“We have concluded another constructive day and started the second week of testing on a positive note. With another 99 laps down, I feel good in the car and am satisfied with the progress we are making. We continue to learn about our strengths as a team with every day spent on track and are motivated to continue of this path. I look forward to being back in the car on Thursday."

Alexander Albon

Alexander Albon (Car 23):
“It wasn’t a bad day today, we started off a little slow after a couple of issues in the morning, but we quickly made up for the lost time and completed a lot of laps. We made a lot of progress in the afternoon session learning more about the car and how it performs in longer runs, so hopefully we can build on that momentum for tomorrow. I’m still getting used to the car and there’s a few things I need to work on and improve, but I think it’s more a case of fine tuning. I’m still getting comfortable with the high-speed of the car and race management of when I can and can’t push, but that will come with the more laps I do. We did a lot of runs to see what suits the car best and also help me prepare for my first race in a couple of weeks."

Jody Egginton (Deputy Technical Director):
“Alex took on driving duties today with a long and varied list of test items to get through. As per normal, the day’s running started with a block of aero tests including some running with aero rakes fitted and then, with increasing track and ambient temperatures, the general test program commenced. Even if this block of work yielded some useful data, a few small but unfortunate time-consuming niggles meant a couple items remained on the to do list for later. However, the impact of this was minimized thanks to the hard work of the mechanics. The early afternoon was focused on the C2 compound, which provided an opportunity to get a good read on tires in the highest temperatures of the day. The final runs of the session allowed a few of the remaining test items from earlier in the day to be evaluated, which meant more boxes were ticked. On the PU side, Honda has picked up where they left off at T01, continuing to run through their test program with minimal impact on the chassis plan, which is a further positive indicator of the hard work they put in over the winter. Alex had a solid day today, gaining mileage and further important experience of the car’s operating window, which has contributed to the team learning more about the 2019 car. We have a lot of data to go through and process tonight to continue moving forwards in the next days of this second test and be best prepared for Melbourne."

Toyoharu Tanabe (Honda F1 Technical Director):
“Today was the start of the final four days of testing before we go to Melbourne. Therefore, our main aim was to ensure that both our teams got as much track time as possible prior to the first race of the season. Today, we managed 239 laps between our two teams, without any major issues. It meant we acquired a lot of data, making it another smooth day. It has also been useful as we continue to learn together with our teams regarding the operational side and from the drivers’ perspective they are gaining in understanding about the PU and indeed the whole car package."

George Russell – the Williams is getting faster

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: It was a good day of testing with George driving the car. We completed 119 laps without any significant reliability issues, so we achieved the entire program that we had planned from the start of the day. We completed a mixture of data gathering and performance running at low and high fuel on a range of different tire compounds. It is early days with our familiarization with the car, so there is a lot of work to do to understand what we have got and the directions that we need to take. We have already identified some opportunities though, and we will keep pushing through the remainder of the week to prepare ourselves for Australia. Well done to the team, a great job by everybody to get a car that can do the laps without incident to make a solid start to the second test.

George Russell:
It was a good day. Our plan was to get as many laps on the board, make sure we had no issues and that’s exactly what we did. We have learnt so much about the car on lower fuel and higher fuel which gives us a good indication moving forward into the next few days. All in all, it was a huge relief to have a day like today and we completed our test plan as intended.

Tuesday Times

C1=Hardest Tire
C5=Softest Tire