Barcelona Test Day 1: Mercedes dominates

Valtteri Bottas

Valtteri Bottas topped the first day of the Barcelona Formula 1 test with a time of 1m15.511s, just 0.105s slower than his record pole position pace from Saturday.

The Mercedes driver was using the Pirelli C5 tires, which are two steps softer than the softs used during the grand prix but will be available in Monaco next weekend.

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc set his best time with five minutes remaining using C2 rubber, ending up 1.422s down.

Valtteri Bottas
Today's test day has been really good. We completed a lot of laps and learned a lot. Our program focused on the tires and setup. We collected lots of data over the race weekend in similar conditions to what we had today in terms of temperature and wind, so it was nice to do some setup comparisons. There were some new mechanical test items on the car too which were interesting to try out. Everyone did a really good job after a long weekend, so it's been another successful day.

Andrew Shovlin
We've had a trouble free day with Valtteri and got through most of the program. The number of test days is so limited now that you always end up with a very busy program and it's important that everything arrives on time with it being our last chance to test this season. We've had a number of developments on the chassis and Power Unit side which we can hopefully bring to the race car over the next few races. We've also done some work on setup for the softer compounds that will be appearing in Monaco and Montreal, along with some longer run work. We have Nikita in the car tomorrow, he's worked with us over the past few months but this will be his first run in the W10 and we have a busy day of testing lined up for him.

Tuesday Results

(P) Pirelli test tire