Glinting in the sharp Spanish sun, the new-look field looked breathtaking – with few looking more ominous than Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. He may have had the sixth-fastest time, but he matched Lcelerc’s 80 laps. A strong effort from Milton Keynes so far.
Nothing can be gleaned from today’s laptimes, as teams pursue their own testing schedules but, for the record, Yuki Tsunoda was fifth on the monitor with a 1min 22.692sec setting 44 laps, whilst three and a half tenths off him with 54 tours was Fernando Alonso in the new blue and pink Alpine.
Sebastian Vettel’s AMR22 was close behind the Spaniard on a 1min 23.328sec lap, whilst Nicholas Latifi came in eighth, five-hundredths off.
Ninth quickest was Nikita Mazepin, the Haas not appearing to run again – he was over three seconds off Williams’ Canadian driver.
Robert Kubica only had a quartet of laps to his name by lunch , with Alfa reporting a broken part that needed replacing, meaning the Pole failed to set a representative time.