Day 1 of this years testing is over....... some will be happier than others.
Red Bull continued their morning dominance and let the afternoon for all but a short period when Lando sat on top of the pile. Max as already said posted an I thought remarkable 1:31.662 to be 8 tenths clear. As the lights came on and the track optimised Max went out again. Not on softs but still on the C3 medium compound. He went another three tenths faster! That put him over a second clear of Lando , 2nd fastest. Thats how it finished.
Actually I have just realised that due to the complex array of 5 different compounds from C1 at the hard end to C5 as the softest,
and with C3 being the tyre Max and others mainly used today would be mediums.... certainly today they had yellow markers to designate medium. Next week at the GP though the combined wizardry of the FIA and Pirelli have sominated the C3 compound as the soft tyre. So the yellow stickers on the C3 will become red stickers next weekend.
So the reality is the medium C3 tyres of today will become the C3 Soft tyres next week. Confused? You are not alone!
More worrying than tyre labels though must be the fact the Red Bull did not miss a beat as Max amassed a healthy gross of laps. OK one lap short of a gross at 143, but still a worrying sign for others. Thats 2.5 full races... without so much as a cough or splutter. At the other end of the reliability scale were Williams. Albon stopped on track when his fuel pump failed. The team spent nearly three hours replacing the faulty pump.... the failed part it seems is one of the most inaccessible parts of the car. Logan Sargeant went out but fared even worse. Less than a dozen laps later it was his turn to suffer a broken Willy. His problem turned out to be a broken driveshaft and the boys and girls from Grove set about fixing Logan's broken Willy. After lengthy repairs that took until darkness fell, Logan reappeared on track to finally amass a paltry 21 laps. With Albons 40 laps that led to a team tally of just 61. First day last year they managed an impressive 149 laps.
But not all is lost for Williams. Logan, in just 21 laps managed to go faster than George Russell managed all day and in 122 laps. No wonder Lewis bailed out of Merc. They looked a bit lost today, the car not really behaving. Lewis was there but, with his day in the car set for tomorrow, he was seen slinking out the back door and vanishing. He had had enough for the day. Perhaps miffed that George got to have the first play with the toys this year.
The reality is that through my eyes Red Bull looked extraordinary. They struggled for the first hour or so of the day, and I must admit early in the day I was starting to think that the smaller sidepod concept they are working with was going to bite them in the bum like we saw Mercedes struggle with. Max came in and got out of the car. The spanner twirlers twirled away. An hour later the boffins had ordered the spanner twirlers to change this and that, Max strapped himself in and voila the missing 2.5 seconds tht they trailed by in the first runs was suddenly advantage Red Bull. Red Bull seemed to fix in a morning what Mercedes failed to fix in 18 months..
McLaren looked good. They will be very happy when you think back to day 1 last year. McLaren had by then realised they had taken a wrong turn and were in the depths of despair. It took them 6 months to fix, but since mid season last year they have improved so much. They will be happy little campers tonight.
Ferrari wont be too upset. Well, they wont be happy of course. The Red Bulls ended the day well over a second quicker. But they were. within a tenth of McLaren so it could have been worse.
Next up was the mobile ATM Cashcard Toro Rosso Alpha Tauri thingy. That got quicker through the day and they will be happy, finishing just a few hunfredths shy of Ferrari. Again a big turnaround from their shocking early 2023 form.
Acouple of tenths back we had Alpine. They looked better than the Aston that were a tenth or so behind Alpine. Stroll in particular, although faster than Fernando but he was locking brakes and facing the wrong way more than once. But he managed a couple of decent laps (The track was much quicker in the afternoon as the sand was replaced by rubber)
Williams we have covered, As their TP Vowles said, it is better to get the poor reliability out of the way when there are no points at stake. Better luck to them tomorrow.
Mercedes finished out of the top ten as hinted and there will be much scratching of heads and looking at data. I daresay the simulator back at Brackley will be doing laps all night, with them trying alternative set ups and settings. in a quest for answers and solutions. The car might have looked awful, but one thing they can be happy with is they managed to get plenty of awful laps into the day. It was reliable if not pretty.
The Sauber again seemed to improve with the track, and they finished top 10 with Joe even if Bottas struggled in the morning. One thing I will say is that the lime green monster look better on TV than in pictures. It was something different and almost a refreshing change. The nam might be awful but the colours showed the brand name off better than any other car on the grid. They did give me something to smile about as cars becan to do the flow viz paint thing, and everyone was lapping with lots of fluro green to show. I wondoered how the Sauber team would go with Flow viz as we know is the same as the colour of their car. The answer was brutally simple. I had never seen red flow-viz paint before
Oh, I forgot to mention Haas. Well they arrived with a new leader who has never led. They said they were going to struggle in the early part of the season. They got that right. They were the only team that went slower in the afternoon than in the morning. And I am not sure the blame lies with the afternoon driver, Nico Hulkenerg. Tough times at Haas. Im sure Guenther might actually be a little relieved to be gotten rid of.
OK Enough already Thats day one out of the way. QUite an interesting day in some ways. Will Red Bull continue to dominate? Hopefully they wont increase the gap tomorrow and some of those behind will play catch up.
Otherwise the season will quickly become very boring.
One thing we do know is that the cars will be, or in fact are already a chunk faster than last year. Max was significantly quicker than his leading time from the opening day last season. It's also not far off the times we saw in the race weekend itself last year. It is certainly over 2 seconds faster than last years race fastest lap. And its only day 1. They will be quicker tomorrow. How much quicker we will have to wait until Friday.
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps Tyres
1 Max Verstappen Red Bull 1:31.344s 142 C3
2 Lando Norris Mclaren 1:32.484s +1.140s 72 C3
3 Carlos Sainz Ferrari 1:32.584s +1.240s 69 C3
4 Daniel Ricciardo RB 1:32.599s +1.255s 51 C3
5 Pierre Gasly Alpine 1:32.805s +1.461s 60 C3
6 Lance Stroll Aston Martin 1:33.007s +1.663s 53 C3
7 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 1:33.247s +1.903s 64 C3
8 Fernando Alonso Aston Martin 1:33.385s +2.041s 77 C3
9 Oscar Piastri Mclaren 1:33.658s +2.314s 57 C3
10 Zhou Guanyu Sauber 1:33.871s +2.527s 62 C3
11 Logan Sargeant Williams 1:33.882s +2.538s 21 C3
12 George Russell Mercedes 1:34.109s +2.765s 121 C2
13 Yuki Tsunoda RB 1:34.136s +2.792s 64 C3
14 Valtteri Bottas Sauber 1:34.431s +3.087s 68 C3
15 Alexander Albon Williams 1:34.587s +3.243s 40 C3
16 Esteban Ocon Alpine 1:34.677s +3.333s 60 C2
17 Kevin Magnussen Haas 1:35.692s +4.348s 66 C3
18 Nico Hulkenberg Haas 1:35.906s +4.562s 82 C3
