Formula 1 is back. Day 1 of pre-season testing saw Lewis Hamilton lead a Mercedes 1-2, with the team also completing the most laps. Here are all the statistics from the opening day of running at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
The first day of pre-season testing began at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with a photo call on the grid. Soon after, it was announced that Charles Leclerc would be taking Sebastian Vettel’s place at Ferrari for the morning session. The under the weather German is expected to return to the cockpit tomorrow. In stark contrast to last year’s testing woes, George Russell was first out on track for Williams.
There were four red flags on the first day of pre-season testing last year, but none this year. The relatively incident-free day saw the drivers complete 1,358 laps in total. There were a few minor hiccups. Daniil Kvyat came to a brief halt on his way out of the garage following a coding issue, Daniel Ricciardo missed the first hour of the afternoon at Renault and Max Verstappen had a couple of spins at the final chicane. Despite his spins, Verstappen was the first driver to reach 100 laps.
Today’s fastest lap, set by Lewis Hamilton, was only 0.755 seconds slower than the fastest lap set over the eight days of pre-season testing last year (a 1:16.221).
Best Lap Times
| Driver | Team | Time | Tyre | |
| 1 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | 1:16.976 | C2 |
| 2 | Valtteri Bottas | Mercedes | 1:17.313 | C3 |
| 3 | Sergio Perez | Racing Point | 1:17.375 | C3 |
| 4 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 1:17.516 | C3 |
| 5 | Daniil Kvyat | AlphaTauri | 1:17.698 | C2 |
| 6 | Carlos Sainz | McLaren | 1:17.842 | C2 |
| 7 | Daniel Ricciardo | Renault | 1:17.873 | C3 |
| 8 | Esteban Ocon | Renault | 1:18.004 | C3 |
| 9 | George Russell | Williams | 1:18.168 | C3 |
| 10 | Lance Stroll | Racing Point | 1:18.282 | C2 |
| 11 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 1:18.289 | C3 |
| 12 | Nicholas Latifi | Williams | 1:18.382 | C4 |
| 13 | Robert Kubica | Alfa Romeo | 1:18.386 | C3 |
| 14 | Kevin Magnussen | Haas | 1:18.466 | C3 |
| 15 | Antonio Giovinazzi | Alfa Romeo | 1:20.096 | C3 |
Laps Complete
DRIVER LAPS COMPLETE
TEAM LAPS COMPLETE
After graduating in 2015 with a First Class honours degree in English Language and Literature, Nicky Haldenby, a lifelong fan of Formula 1, founded the Lights Out F1 Blog in 2016. Now in its sixth season, the blog has become a firm fan-favourite, delving deep into the sport’s history books and lifting the cover on unusual F1 statistics. Nicky also writes at F1Destinations and GPDestinations. In 2017 and 2018, he wrote for Badger GP. Nicky is also the host of the F1 Rewind Podcast and can be heard as the resident stats man on the 2 Soft Compounds Podcast.