Hamilton and Russell fastest on last day in Barcelona

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest testing time for Mercedes on the last day of the first test in Barcelona, ​​which was interrupted five times in the morning due to various incidents while in the afternoon Pirelli soaked the track with water for drivers to test wet weather tyres.

Hamilton drove 1:19.138 on the softest Pirelli C5 tyres after driving 1:19.141 on the C4 component ten minutes earlier, but if he had driven the third sector in that lap at the level of previous attempts, he could have driven below 1:19.

During the lunch break, Pirelli soaked the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya track to test wet weather tyres, but drivers drove only a few laps on blue-marked wet  tyres before switching to green-marked intermediate tyres.

The track dried up in about an hour and a half so the drivers had a chance to improve their times in the last hours of the last day.

The morning part of the last day was marked by five interruptions, the first due to Gasly in AlphaTauri crashing in the Turn 5 and the second due to Alonso whose Alpine A522 stopped on the track with a lot of smoke from the back of the car – his team later confirmed that it was a hydraulic failure.

Alfa Romeo’s new driver Guanyu Zhou caused two interruptions, the first because he spun and ended up in a gravel trap, and the second because of a technical problem that stopped him on the starting finish line.

Vettel caused the last red flag after his Aston Martin AMR22 stopped on the track due to power unit issues, but unlike Alonso who drove only 12 laps in the morning, Vettel managed to be among the more productive drivers with 48 laps before the break.

Four teams due to technical problems did not drive at all in the afternoon (Haas, Alpine, Aston Martin and AlphaTauri) while five teams drove more than 100 laps (Mercedes, Williams, Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari).

Thanks to his best lap (C5) from the morning, Russell finished second fastest, 0.095 seconds behind Hamilton, and Red Bull drivers Perez and Verstappen finished third and fourth, with the Mexican (C4) two tenths faster than the Dutchman (C3).

Vettel finished fifth fastest for Aston Martin after driving 48 laps ahead of two Ferrari drivers in the morning, with Sainz driving more than twice as many laps as Leclerc.

Two Williams drivers Albon and Latifi on C4 tyres finished ahead of two drivers McLaren Ricciardo and Norris on C3 compound, followed by Alonso, Zhou and Gasly.

Mazepin and Bottas took the last two places with the least number of laps – the Russian drove nine and the Finn ten laps.

The second pre-season test, also lasting three days, starts on March 10 in Bahrain, on the same track where the first race of the new season will take place a week later.

DAY 3 RESULTS

NUMBER OF LAPS – DRIVERS

NUMBER OF LAPS – TEAMS

NUMBER OF LAPS – ENGINE MANUFACTURERS