Formula 1 begins its pre-season preparations this week, with the first of two tests getting underway in the build up to the opening race in Bahrain.
While we got spoilt with 2 car reveals from Haas and Alfa Romeo (well, from what we could see with that camo livery anyway), as well as the first ACTUAL appearance of the Red Bull RB18, we did not have to wait long for the track side action to get underway.
Ferrari’s new F1-75 proved the star performer on the opening morning with Charles Leclerc setting the pace early with a time in the high 1:21s on the Hard compound tyre. He then whittled that time away with a 1:20.165 on the Medium compound an hour before the mandatory lunch break. His time went unbeaten for the remainder of the morning, claiming the first headlines of the season for Ferrari.
Mercedes got their on-track action underway with George Russell not letting a second go to waste, being the first driver to leave the pit-lane when the lights went green at 9AM local time. Russell spent most of the morning in 2nd place, before he got demoted to third as Lando Norris put in a 1:20.474. Russell’s time was a further 0.310 seconds away from Norris’ best.
Russell, Yuki Tsunoda, Max Verstappen, and Charles Leclerc all took turns at the top early on in the morning, but it was ultimately Norris who left it late to set the pace on Wednesday afternoon, having strapped on a set of Pirelli’s C4 soft tyres to lower the benchmark and become the first (and only) driver of the day to dip under the 1m20s mark with a smashing 1:19.568!
Although the Brit seemed to have some car troubles leaving the pit-lane at one stage with his mechanics wheeling him back to the garage, the problem could not have been too serious, as Lando headed out not too long after the incident.
It has been an eventful day of testing for the new season, with all team engineers having to put in some hard work tonight to make sure no single piece of data is missed to get on top of these new regulation changes and new-look 2022 cars, and although the times set by the drivers cannot be taken too seriously, might we just have a glimpse of what’s to come for this season?
One thing is for certain – None of us can wait for lights out, come the 20th of March at the Bahrain Desert!