On the last day of preseason testing, Lewis Hamilton stated that Ferrari “definitely have some work to do to improve” while George Russell, a former Mercedes teammate, set the pace.
Five minutes before the end of the day’s running, Russell finished a lap ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen by 0.021 seconds.
In his Ferrari, Hamilton finished the day sixth fastest, 0.8 seconds behind Russell.
Alex Albon of Williams finished third fastest, ahead of Pierre Gasly of Alpine and Oscar Piastri of McLaren.
“You have to take everything with a grain of salt because it’s difficult to know what fuel loads everyone is running,” Hamilton stated.
Speaking prior to his afternoon drive, Hamilton expressed optimism about his first preseason test with his new squad.
“I feel like we’ve built a really good foundation but these guys out there look really competitive, it looks very close,” he remarked.
I had not felt so well in a long time as I do now.” However, Ferrari abruptly stopped his jogging before he could finish the predetermined race distance, so his day ended early.
Hamilton was using a tire compound one step softer than teammate Charles Leclerc, but he was still about 0.5 seconds faster. While Leclerc drove in the morning, he also drove in the afternoon.
Because so many variables might skew the results, preseason testing is infamously unreliable as a gauge of genuine competitiveness.
Performance is significantly impacted by fuel loads and engine modes, and teams do not disclose the specifications under which they were operating their vehicles.
Furthermore, Friday’s weather was extremely different from Thursday’s; it was sunny, much warmer, and windier, which made the track go more slowly than it had on Thursday.
The Red Bull appeared challenging to drive despite Verstappen’s speed, and the team experimented with various setups and combinations, such as switching between two different front wing specs.
Late in the day, the four-time world champion went for a spin at Turn One.
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