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Fastest and farthest: A summary of pre-season testing in Barcelona

After a cagey start to pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya last week, the second batch of four days has started to offer up some real data and insight into how things stand heading to Melbourne.

The analysis is helped by the weather staying remarkably fine and consistent - such a change on the snow and ice of 2018 - meaning we get a proper picture of how teams are improving in readiness to the first Grand Prix in just two weeks time.

In terms of pace we already know that Ferrari appear to have the edge over Mercedes and the rest of the field, with all of this week's drivers setting their best times on the C5 compound in the final two days with the exception of Max Verstappen who unfortunately never had the opportunity.

© Pirelli

But speed is only half the story, and Ferrari has also had a few issues along the way that ate into their track time. The same was true of Red Bull, who lost almost all of the last day of running to gearbox issues, following Pierre Gasly's accident earlier in the week.

So it probably won't be a surprise that with another largely consistent and trouble-free run for the second week in Spain, it's Mercedes who come out on top in terms of completed mileage. Hamilton completed 331 laps during the four days and his team mate Valtteri Bottas contributed another 249. That compares to 231 laps for Vettel and 168 for Charles Leclerc.

Pre-season test - week 2 driver mileage (four days)

Pos Driver Team Laps Miles
1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 331 957
2 Kevin Magnussen Haas 278 804
3 Daniel Ricciardo Renault 266 769
4 Carlos Sainz Jr McLaren 264 763
5 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 262 758
6 George Russell Williams 259 749
7 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 249 720
8 Kimi Raikkinen Alfa Romeo 245 709
9 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso 232 671
10 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 231 668
11 Alexander Albon Toro Rosso 221 639
12 Robert Kubica Williams 220 636
13 Romain Grosjean Haas 209 604
14 Pierre Gasly Red Bull 201 581
15 Sergio Perez Racing Point 192 555
16 Lance Stroll Racing Point 185 535
17 Antonio Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 170 492
18 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 168 486
19 Lando Norris McLaren 164 474
20 Max Verstappen Red Bull 157 454

In total, Mercedes racked up an impressive 1190 laps over the full eight days of testing, which is nearly 200 more than Ferrari who just missed out on the millennium milestone with 997 laps. Renault, Toro Rosso and Alfa Romeo also put in solid performances with Nico Hulkenberg, Alexander Albon and Kimi Raikkonen respectively putting in the miles.

McLaren were slightly further back with 873 laps with Carlos Sainz accumulating 473 of those compared to a solid 400 for Lando Norris. The team's total was just two more than Haas where Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen finished on pretty even mileage (407 laps to 403) together with a further 61 contributed by the team's test driver Pietro Fittipaldi.

Pre-season test - total driver mileage (eight days)

Pos Driver Team Laps Miles
1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 638 1845
2 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 552 1596
3 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 534 1544
4 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 509 1472
5 Kimi Raikkinen Alfa Romeo 497 1437
6 Alexander Albon Toro Rosso 489 1414
7 Carlos Sainz Jr McLaren 473 1368
8 Charles Leclerc Ferrari 463 1339
9 Daniel Ricciardo Renault 452 1307
10 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso 446 1290
11 Pierre Gasly Red Bull 439 1270
12 Antonio Giovinazzi Alfa Romeo 425 1229
13 Romain Grosjean Haas 407 1177
14 Kevin Magnussen Haas 403 1165
15 Lando Norris McLaren 400 1157
16 Max Verstappen Red Bull 394 1139
17 Lance Stroll Racing Point 336 972
18 George Russell Williams 299 865
19 Sergio Perez Racing Point 289 836
20 Robert Kubica Williams 268 775
21 Pietro Fittipaldi Haas 61 176

McLaren and Haas are both well ahead of Red Bull, whose full test tally stalled at 833 laps because of the problems they encountered in the last couple of days. After that you have the two teams teams looking in some trouble, with Racing Point managing just 625 laps in Spain because of a host of teething issues. Sergio Perez only managed 289 laps during the two weeks (and Lance Stroll did 336) which must be a bit of a concern for the squad.

Given that they missed the first two and a half days of the test, it's surely not a surprise to see Williams at the bottom of the mileage table. But for all their high profile problems, the team managed to finish with 567 laps in the bag which really isn't all that far behind Racing Point, so perhaps there's a glimmer of hope at Grove for what the team can achieve in 2019.

Pre-season test - total team mileage (eight days)

Pos Team Laps miles
1 Mercedes 1190 3441
2 Ferrari 997 2883
3 Renault 961 2779
4 Toro Rosso 935 2704
5 Alfa Romeo 922 2666
6 McLaren 873 2525
7 Haas 871 2519
8 Red Bull 833 2409
9 Racing Point 625 1808
10 Williams 567 1640

Another way of slicing the data is to look at how the different engine manufacturers fared. As well as their championship winning factory team, Mercedes also supplies power units to Force India and Williams and so their combined mileage for the two week test turns out to be not quite so impressive - 2382 laps.

By comparison, Ferrari - who additionally supply Haas and Alfa Romeo as well as the works team itself - shine with a combined total of 2790 laps for their engines in Spain.

The other two manufacturers are down a team apiece, with Renault supplying just McLaren as a customer operation and Honda now working with Red Bull and Toro Rosso, so it's no surprise that in each case their total mileage is somewhat lower. The French manufacturer's teams managed 1834 laps over the two weeks with Honda a little further back, with a still-respectable 1768 for the eight days.

Pre-season test - total engine mileage (eight days)

Pos Engine Laps Miles
1 Ferrari 2790 8069
2 Mercedes 2382 6889
3 Renault 1834 5304
4 Honda 1768 5113

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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