FÓRMULA-1

Tests: Kvyat gets the best time of day

It was necessary to wait for the last minutes to have a new name at the top of the timescale. Daniil Kvyat made the best record of the day and the best time of the week. Kimi Raikkonen dethroned Vettel late in the morning session and remained at the top of the table until the last minutes. Daniel Ricciardo still tried to get to the top spot and made what was at the time the second fastest time, but to the delight of Honda, Toro Rosso and Red Bull, it was Kvyat getting the fastest time after one more day with no reliability issues.
Already the same can not tell Haas that it provoked the display of red flags three times today. Pietro Fittipaldi stood in the middle of the track in the morning session of Romain Grosjean early in the afternoon session and at the end of the same session, shortening the day's work in five minutes.
But for now the reliability has been a word of order with the teams to accumulate a tremendous amount of turns. The McLaren delayed to appear on track but after Sainz started to race never stopped again. Renault, also made many laps, just like the vast majority of teams. Still he got a brave fright as he lost control of the back of the car in the morning. Also visible were pieces of carbon fiber being released from the single-seater orange on two occasions.
Ferrari returned to show good progress, especially in the long stints, and assume more and more as the reference. On the Mercedes side, whether bluff or not, there seems to be some concern. Lewis Hamilton admitted that this season will be even harder than the previous ones and Toto Wolff admitted that the team is pondering the course of his development and that he could adopt a philosophy more like that of Ferrari, which could take several weeks to apply. How bluffing? Nobody knows, because nobody knows the level of fuel that teams have used. For now it has not been a very different Mercedes from the usual, to rotate with the harder rubbers and with much fuel. The tempo is not overwhelming but that is not the purpose of the silver arrows at this time.
Red Bull and Toro Rosso have passed without problems in Barcelona which is a good sign for Honda's driving units. The chassis has the quality expected. Renault has also done its work, but it is still difficult to assess the performance of the car, as in McLaren, whose chassis was praised by Lando Norris, who said it was a clear step forward, although with some gaps improving. Racing Point has been discreet but is also a team habit and as such is difficult to assess overall performance.
Finally, the story of the day: Williams finally went to the track. After failing two days of testing the team managed to do what was the shakedown of the car. A difficult situation, which Claire Williams had no trouble labeling as embarrassing. Paddy Lowe is in the spotlight, pressure on the team's technical manager has increased exponentially and if the car is not minimally competitive, the possibility of his departure begins. For the moment the only concrete data is that Williams starts again in the worst form and that is with a disadvantage of two days in relation to the competition, which in F1 is a lot.
Number of laps:
Raikkonen - 138
Kvyat - 137
Vettel - 134
Verstappen - 104
Hamilton - 94
Sainz - 90
Bottas - 88
Ricciardo - 80
Grosjean - 69
Perez - 67
Hulkenberg - 63
Fittipaldi - 48
Russell - 23 Fábio Mendes, Portugal