Leclerc tops Day 2 testing for Ferrari (Update)

Charles Leclerc

UPDATE This story has been updated with additional quotes and photos. See also our full photo page of the day's events.

02/19/19

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc's time from prior to lunch survived a soft tire onslaught from Lando Norris and McLaren to give Ferrari top time for the second day running.

Leclerc lapped within 1/10th of a second of Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel’s Monday time in the opening session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Tuesday, recording a lap of 1m18.247s before lunch.

The time was good enough to give Leclerc top spot come the end of the day as Ferrari enjoyed another strong day of running, completing over 158 laps.

A late improvement saw Lando Norris of C4 softer tires finish the day second for McLaren, finishing three-tenths of a second back from Leclerc's time with over 100 laps completed in the MCL34.

Kevin Magnussen took P3 for Haas, but missed the final couple of hours of the session due to a seat issue. Haas reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi was thrown a bone and put in the car for the final portion of running, albeit completing only 13 laps.

Pierre Gasly was responsible for causing the only red flag of the afternoon session after spinning into the wall at Turn 12, bringing his day to an early end in the process due to damage to the rear of the RB15 car.

Quotes

Leclerc

Charles Leclerc (Car 16): “I am very happy with the way today went," were the Monegasque driver’s first comments as he got out of the car at the end of the day. “Despite some red flag interruptions, we were able to get through all our program and to do 157 laps, which has produced a lot of useful data. In terms of feeling, I quickly felt comfortable with the SF90 and I have to say I really enjoyed myself. Emotion? There’s always going to be some when you get into a Ferrari, but today I put that to one side because I had a job to do for the team. Let’s hope we keep going like this over the next few days, because it’s important to make the most of the few on-track testing opportunities we have."

Alexander Albon (Car 23): “Today was up there with one of my all-time great experiences! It’s been a really good day. At the start I was thinking to myself ‘don’t spin it this morning’, and that’s exactly what I did! It was really tricky out there because the track was so cold that you couldn’t drive slowly – as soon as you drive too slow your tires get cold, it becomes unpredictable and it’s like driving on ice. Once I got into my rhythm it was a smooth day and we had no issues, apart from a couple of spins later on, but I was just exploring the limits to see what the car was capable of. I did a few laps on Wednesday for our Filming Day, so today wasn’t a totally new experience to drive an F1 car, and I’ve also been in the simulator many times, so I had a general idea of what the car could do. However, the high speed of the car is definitely new to me and it was a bit of a positive shock – I’m enjoying it a lot! I’m still smiling from when I got out of the car and I’ll continue smiling throughout tonight until tomorrow!

Lewis Hamilton Sandbagging

Lewis Hamilton (Car 44): It's been a good day overall. It was quite cold in the morning, so switching the tires on was a little bit tricky, but it seemed like a few people had similar issues. We were focusing on working through our run plan and we got through everything we wanted. It's good that we're getting in a lot of mileage and we will try to increase that over the next days as we continue to discover the characteristics of this car. That's the exciting part about it – learning something new and being faced with different challenges. Everyone is working so diligently, I'm really happy to be here with everyone for the seventh year in a row and I'm excited for this journey that we're embarking on.

Valtteri Bottas (Car 77): We did a lot of laps today and again managed to complete our run plan. We're learning a lot about the W10 with each run and we're building a better understanding of the set-up. The car was better balanced than yesterday, but there's still a bit of room for improvement. As you can tell from the lap times, we've been focusing on long-run work. I'll be in the car tomorrow morning, so it will be a busy evening for me, taking in all the learnings from today. It's been a pretty normal test so far; fortunately, the car has been very reliable, so that's good news.

James Allison: We're just two days in, but already a quarter of the way through the precious days of winter testing. Today was another very useful day for us, accumulating a lot of miles, proving out a lot of components and testing with both drivers several set-up avenues. The car was trouble-free all day and we added to the knowledge about the tires and the car that we started to acquire yesterday. This permits us to build a foundation for the second test where all the interesting running will take place.

Pierre Gasly wadded up the new Red Bull

Antonio Giovinazzi (Car 99): “It was a great experience to drive my own Formula One car for the first time and I look forward to developing it together with our team throughout this season. We are at the beginning of the testing process, so we tried out some different aerodynamic configurations to learn about the behavior of the car. I felt very comfortable in it, and we put in a good number of laps. Overall, it was a positive day and I look forward to being in the car again on Thursday."

Pierre Gasly (Car 10): “I was pushing the car to the limit and playing on the limits and went on throttle, lost the rear, and that was it," Gasly said. “It caught me a bit by surprise but there is not much more you can do when it happens. Out of Turn 10 I went on the power and shifted to fifth and lost it. It was quite annoying to lose the hour of testing today. So far it has been really positive. We have tried a lot of different things in the car and the package that we have. Overall for my first day in the car I felt pretty comfortable so pretty positive. I think it’s too early to talk about expectations. At the moment we need to understand the overall performance of our package, it is quite important for us to have our first feedback and first impressions are quite good. We tested some really positive things, some others negative, and now we need to understand a bit more before having any expectations. I think so far it’s been good. Also looking at Toro Rosso they’ve done a lot of laps so we need to use all the feedback but so far we are really happy with the job they have done."

Lance Stroll

Lance Stroll: “It was great to be back in the car after a few months and to get down to work. It’s a special feeling when you head down the pit lane for the first time in the new car and release the pit limiter. The general first impression is positive and we worked through the program covering lots of laps with good reliability. It’s early days working trackside with the team so I’m still building up my relationship with some of the crew and understanding how the team likes to approach things, but I already feel comfortable. I didn’t really get a good feel for the new aero rules on these cars yet because I didn’t run in traffic very much, but that’s something I will understand better over the next few days."

Day 2 Final Times

C1 = hardest tires
C5 = softest tires