In Spain, multiple crashes and surprises earmark final pre-F1 test.
MONTIMELO, Spain- February 28th-March 1st—Last Tuesday, it was difficult to predict the favorite Formula One driver and car as the final pre-season test took place at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain. But when it was all said and done, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and Charles LeClerc came out with the quickest car.
When the final day approached, Lewis Hamilton made a run on the softest of the Pirelli tires and came only 0.003 seconds off Vettel’s time. That pace broke the record for the fastest lap of the entire test sessions–both this week and the previous one. The German’s 1:16:221 might have been the best, but it took a few tough days to make it work well.
For the first two days, it was rookie Lando Norris in his McLaren who was the quickest but, on day two, it showed that the cars going around the circuit could have massive problems. Vettel had a defective rim, which broke at turn three in the morning session. Although Vettel was unhurt, the car was taken back to the garage. It took the rest of the day to repair before LeClerc would have a chance to test it later in the day. The Monegasque took over in the afternoon, but only ran a small number of laps. For Vettel, it confused him about what happened.
“Well, we covered a lot of mileage last week, but surely the plan was to fulfill your program,” Vettel surmised. “But right now, it is important to understand what happened. I hit the wall quite, and I think the Tecpro and the wall did their job, and the car did its job but, of course, after the impact, the car was very damaged. That’s what also makes it quite difficult to reconstruct what was going on just before the impact.”
LeClerc came out on the third day and set the best time up to that point–1:16:231. Even more surprising was Alex Albon in the Toro Rosso, which along with teammate, Dani Kvyat, kept the car near the front.
Norris put McLaren near the top as well but, even with the Renault engine, the car must have had lots of aerodynamic work done over the early winter to get this satisfying result. But if anyone would have thought another major shunt could happen, it did on the afternoon of the third day, when Red Bull’s Pierre Gasly lost control of the car at turn nine and crashed heavily into the barriers.
Like Vettel the day before, Gasly was unhurt, but the issue with the Frenchman relied on simply making an error rather than having a part of the car malfunction, as was the case of Vettel.
“I made a mistake in turn nine and lost the car,” said Gasly. “It was a pretty big crash, one of the biggest crashes I have had so far. It will be a long night for the mechanics. I am sorry for them. But what is important is that Max (Verstappen) is back in the car and we focus on the positives.”
Verstappen might have had a chance to drive on the final day, but the damage from Gasly’s accident did not give Verstappen much time to put in long laps due to a bad gearbox.
But the question about the entire week was whether Mercedes was taking its time. Some say they are sandbagging their efforts until Hamilton puts on the softest tires to prove what the car was worth. Although the Briton was close to taking the best time on the final day of the test, he still felt that the Mercedes was still half a second off Ferrari’s best lap. But he wasn’t certain of it afterward.
“I’m not quite sure,” replied Hamilton, “but I think it is potentially half a second,” he said. “We will be analyzing a lot from this test, and there will be some modifications that we will try to implement for the race. But there is not a lot of time [before Melbourne].”
“Over the next week, we will try to gain another tenth at least in our understanding of the car,” Hamilton continued. “The car is old now and worn and torn so that we will have new components and all of that stuff will come along. It will be interesting. So Melbourne will be the first time you get a sight of it and then it will be a good four races before you know just where you stand.”
It will come down to the Friday practice on March 15th when it will be determined who has the advantage during the first race weekend in Australia.
