A mad dash before the lunch-break put Alfa Romeo Racing's Antonio Giovinazzi at the top of the time-sheet as pre-season testing resumed on Tuesday in Barcelona.
The Italian's 1m18.589 benchmark time just edged the morning's pace-setter, Red Bull's Pierre Gasly, by 0.058s, while Ferrari's Charles Leclerc clocked in third during a morning which saw the Scuderia's SF90 achieve a relatively low lap tally.
Pre-season test Day 5 - Morning session
| Pos | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Giovinazzi | Alfa Romeo | 1:18.589 | 56 |
| 2 | Gasly | Red Bull | 1:18.647 | 61 |
| 3 | Leclerc | Ferrari | 1:18.651 | 28 |
| 4 | Stroll | Racing Point | 1:19.139 | 44 |
| 5 | Magnussen | Haas | 1:19.644 | 82 |
| 6 | Russell | Williams | 1:19.662 | 46 |
| 7 | Albon | Toro Rosso | 1:20.689 | 38 |
| 8 | Hamilton | Mercedes | 1:20.332 | 83 |
| 9 | Hulkenberg | Renault | 1:20.348 | 80 |
| 10 | Norris | McLaren | 1:22.306 | 38 |
After an initial first week of in-depth and fundamental work, during which Ferrari emerged has the early front-runner, teams will have just four days of running to fine-tune and update their 2019 chargers.
Some will be moving their performance to the next level while others will remain entrenched in their baseline work.
Suffice to say, it should be an interesting last few days in Barcelona which should provide us with a good glimpse of the pecking order two weeks before the 2019 season gets underway in Melbourne.
Testing resumed under sunny and mild conditions at the Circuit de Catalunya, and with Ferrari opting to allocate half-day stints this week to Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel, following Mercedes and Renault's routine.
Cars took to the track equipped with the usual array of aero rakes and measuring devices, but it didn't take an eagle-eye to notice a raft of changes to Mercedes' W10, with updates implemented to the Silver Arrow's nose, front wing, side-pods, etc…
Red Bull's Pierre Gasly was the early pace-setter, the Frenchman putting a 1m19.973 on the board using Pirelli's C3 compound, with Leclerc and Nico Hulkenberg in tow.
Tuesday is essentially Williams' first day of real testing following the team's belated and laborious start last week. Needless to say, mileage will be the British outfit's and George Russel's top priority.
Over an hour into the session, Gasly - still on the C3 tyre but with an unknow fuel load - dropped his benchmark time to 1m18.647, outpacing Racing Point's Lance Stroll and Alfa Romeo's Antonio Giovinazzi.
Over at Ferrari, it wasn't a typical fast and busy morning for the Scuderia, with Leclerc putting in just just six laps in the opening 30 minutes of running, while Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton were up to 40 laps and counting just two hours into the session.
McLaren's Lando Norris brought out the first red flag of the week with a trip into the gravel. The recovery vehicle's intervention was swift however and the session resumed after a 10-minute break.
Ferrari finally fired back up Leclerc's SF90, the team saying its morning programme had been delayed by "a few checks to the cooling system".
The Monegasque was quick to target Gasly's fastest lap, laying down a 1m18.651 that just fell short by 0.004s of the Red Bull driver's benchmark time.
Among the mid-field runners, Haas enjoyed a trouble-free morning, a luxury it was looking forward to after last week's teething reliability problems that impacted its VF-19.
Williams also raked up the laps - steadily improving its FW42 as Russell convincingly lowered the lap times - as did Mercedes and Hamilton with a productive and mega haul of 83 laps for the team's updated W10.
As the session headed into the 1pm lunch-break, Giovinazzi took himself and the Alfa Romeo C38 to the top of the time-sheet, with the help of a set of C4 Pirelli compounds, the Italian lowering the fastest time of the morning by 0.058s to set a new benchmark for the afternoon session.
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
