Barcelona Day 4: Sandbagging Mercedes to dominate 2015 season

Rosberg fired a warning shot across the bow of every other F1 team in the paddock. The Mercedes is 2-seconds per lap faster than everyone else.

Romain Grosjean turned the fastest lap Sunday at Barcelona with a time of 1m24.067s on Pirelli Super-Soft tires. However, Nico Rosberg was just 3/10ths slower on the rock hard Pirelli medium tires. Pirelli says the super-softs are 2 seconds per lap faster, so that puts Rosberg's real time at 1m22.3s.

No one is even close to Mercedes. It is already game, set, and match for the 2015 season. It will be a Mercedes 1-2 parade again. The only thing missing will be the floats.

Nico Rosberg
Today was actually a really difficult day. In the morning the tires weren't really working properly and then it was so windy out on track until late in the day. It was difficult to understand in the car because every run was different from corner to corner. Depending on where the wind was coming from, the car felt totally different. So it really made testing extremely tough today. Even the sun was making it tricky at the end once the wind dropped down, as it was just on the horizon. Some of the corners were absolutely blind so you just had to commit to it by memory. But anyway, together with the team I was still able to learn a few things and it was a good end to the test with no major problems on the car and a lot of useful running at the end when the wind was calmer. Looking at the times it's of course still not clear where we stand and we're keeping a close eye on the competition. But we're confident that we have a good car at least.

Sunday Times
1. Romain Grosjean France Lotus-Mercedes 111 laps 1m 24.067s (Super-Soft Tires)
2. Nico Rosberg Germany Mercedes-Mercedes 129 laps 1m 24.321s (Rock hard Medium Tires)
3. Daniil Kvyat Russia Red Bull-Renault 102 laps 1m 24.941s (Soft Tires)
4. Felipe Nasr Brazil Sauber-Ferrari 73 laps 1m 24.956s (Super-Soft Tires)
5. Valtteri Bottas Finland Williams-Mercedes 127 laps 1m 25.345s
6. Carlos Sainz Spain Toro Rosso-Renault 88 laps 1m 25.604s
7. Sebastian Vettel Germany Ferrari-Ferrari 74 laps 1m 26.312s
8. Nico Hulkenberg Germany Force India-Mercedes 36 laps 1m 26.591s *
9. Fernando Alonso Spain McLaren-Honda 20 laps 1m 27.956

* Using 2014 specification VJM07