F1 pre-season testing: Who are winners and losers?
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc completed the test with the fastest lap time, 0.811 seconds faster than the next best lap set by Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.
Headline times in testing are not usually the place to look to gauge the competitive order, but this one reflected the picture in an important way: Mercedes and Ferrari appear to be heading into the new season in the best shape.
World champion McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said on Friday evening: “This test confirmed that Ferrari and Mercedes look like the teams to beat. McLaren and Red Bull [are] “It’s probably very similar, Ferrari and Mercedes are a step ahead.”
That picture, an impression echoed by many other senior figures in the pit lane, comes less from race simulation runs than from headline lap times – even though they list the teams as Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, Red Bull.
Since teams fuel up their cars and run the grand prix distance, there are fewer variables to cloud the picture than in single laps.
On Friday evening, Leclerc produced his best race simulation of the week; He was slightly faster than Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri the day before, and they entered the race at around the same time.
Mercedes did not run any race simulations in the second week; only in the first week when track conditions were up to a second slower.
Antonelli easily ran the fastest race simulation of the first week; he was much faster than Piastri, who was running at the same time.
His team-mate George Russell, the bookies’ pre-season championship favourite, was also impressively quick when running in warmer, slower conditions earlier in the day.
This is not an exact science, but the accumulation of data has led to the conclusion that Stella and many others have reached.
One complication was that McLaren were not running the latest Mercedes power unit specification that Mercedes had proven, so they can expect an increase when they switch to the latest specification in Australia.
Another is that Russell said Red Bull’s new engine has the best energy delivery, which is a very important aspect this season.
Mercedes’ biggest concern is reliability. This affected Antonelli much more than Russell, but it’s probably fair to say that Red Bull’s new driver, Isack Hadjar, suffered more problems than Mercedes’ big rivals, although he did miss out on a fair bit of the race due to issues of one sort or another.
