Mercedes made a press release by setting a brand new benchmark lap time on the penultimate day of F1’s pre-season shakedown in Barcelona.
Persevering with on the second day, Mercedes maintained a 1-2 lead on the prime of the timesheets on the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, however this time it was George Russell who took the lead.
Russell lowered the bar for quickest total take a look at time with a time of 1:16.641, hours after teammate Kimi Antonelli clocked 1:17.081, additionally taking Wednesday’s headline time.
It was one other profitable day for the spectacular Mercedes. One other huge 168 laps have been accomplished on Thursday, retaining the Silver Arrows on the prime of the entire mileage chart after the shakedown in Barcelona, ending their third and last day of driving permission.
Third place went to Charles Leclerc, who changed teammate Lewis Hamilton within the afternoon with a time of 1 minute 19.128 seconds.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton recovered from what social media footage confirmed was a reasonably innocuous early spin, chalking up 170 laps with Ferrari’s Leclerc and finishing 85 laps.
Aston Martin lastly debuts, McLaren runs into hassle
Thursday noticed the primary look of Aston Martin’s long-awaited 2026 F1 Challenger after the Silverstone crew arrived late for the primary pre-season take a look at.
Adrian Newey’s first Aston Martin F1 automobile, the AMR26, was flown to Spain and work continued late Wednesday evening and into Thursday, earlier than it lastly took to the observe with an hour left within the afternoon session.
The penultimate day got here to a dramatic finish when the all-black AMR26 accomplished a number of laps with Lance Stroll on the wheel earlier than coming to a halt on the observe close to the top and a pink flag was proven.
Earlier than his Aston broke down, Stroll recorded one gradual lap of 1 minute, 46.404 seconds, dropping him to the underside of the leaderboard.
It wasn’t a clean day for McLaren.
After begin to the pre-season program on Wednesday, Oscar Piastri’s first day of the MCL40 was reduce brief after McLaren’s run on Thursday was interrupted by a gas system downside.
“It was good to be again, particularly with a brand new automobile. There have been a number of new challenges up and down the grid this 12 months, so it was good to have the ability to deal with a few of them,” mentioned the Australian.
“Sadly, we had some points right now. We had a gas system problem that reduce our day slightly bit brief, however I do know the crew is working arduous to resolve the problems and get again to doing as many laps as potential tomorrow.”
Pink Bull was absent from Thursday’s motion because the crew waits for spare components following Isaac Hajar’s fiery crash on Tuesday. The Milton Keynes crew is scheduled to renew its testing program on Friday.
Haas additionally opted to not take part on the penultimate day after struggling two mechanical issues on Wednesday, whereas Alpine and Audi opted to save lots of their last day of apply for Friday.
Williams was unable to provide its FW48 machine in time and missed the whole opening take a look at.
