Mercedes quick out of the blocks with new W11 as Hamilton and Bottas finish first and second; All teams top 100 laps with no red flags; Ferrari make quiet start with SF1000 down in 11th
Wednesday 19 February 2020 21:10, UK
Lewis Hamilton topped the first day of winter testing as F1 champions Mercedes set a hot pace in a headline-grabbing start to 2020.
For just the second time in the hybrid-engine era, Mercedes headed the opening day's timesheet at testing with Hamilton and team-mate Valtteri Bottas finishing first and second quickest respectively across their two stints in the new W11.
Hamilton drove in the afternoon session and his quickest time - 1:16.975 - was 1.2s faster than the Day One pace set in 2019.
"It's been a good day and a really good start for all of us, considering we had a long break," said Hamilton, who completed 94 laps. "So to come back and clock in over 170 laps just shows how hard everyone has been working over the winter."
Expectations that F1 2020 will produce the fastest cars in history were underlined by the early pace of the whole field, with the 10-team pack encouragingly separated by just 1.5 seconds.
While headline lap times from testing are often not representative, Mercedes' Day One advantage was 0.3s over Racing Point and 0.5s over Red Bull, one of their expected title rivals.
Reliability was impressive too: all teams put at least 100 laps on their new challengers and, unusually, the day featured no session-stopping red flags.
"This is the most reliable we have seen in the last few years," Mercedes boss Toto Wolff told Sky F1.
Red Bull have been conscious of the fact they require a fast start to 2020 in order to challenge Mercedes and, in mileage terms, they got it with Max Verstappen completing 168 laps on the RB16's full debut.
However, the Dutchman's day did still include two spins at the final chicane.
"We have improved the car in the areas we wanted to over the winter and the car feels faster everywhere, which is great.," said Verstappen. "The reliability has been good so far, so now we just have to do a lot more laps, test all the new parts and see where we can improve it further.
Ferrari were the fastest team this time last year, but here they finished a low-key day down in 11th place.
Charles Leclerc was called up to give the car its full debut after Sebastian Vettel felt unwell ahead of the session. The four-time champion is scheduled to return on Thursday afternoon.
Revealing he had received the call-up from Ferrari at 6.45am, Leclerc added: "We weren't looking at performance today, instead concentrating on learning about the SF1000 and getting in tune with it."
Sergio Perez, meanwhile, guided Racing Point to third place behind the Mercedes' in the new RP20 ahead of a season in which the team are targeting a return to fourth place in the championship. Team-mate Lance Stroll took over the car in the afternoon and took it past 100 laps for the day.
McLaren's Carlos Sainz was sixth after 161 laps, ahead of Renault pair Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon as they split running on the RS20's debut.
C1 is the hardest-compound tyre, C5 is the softest
While few, if any conclusions, about the season ahead can be drawn from the first eight hours of testing, Day One was undoubtedly particularly important for one team - Williams.
Twelve months on from the embarrassment of missing the first two days of running, the former champions were first out on track with the new FW43 and went on to rack up more laps - 136 - than they managed in the whole of week one in 2019.
"To see it line up against the red light was the plan today, we purposely did that, it was a statement we wanted to make," said Claire Williams to Sky F1. "Just to see it go out first and it was fantastic to see.
"We've had a really great day and the team have done a great job to get us to this point."
Williams' deputy team boss added: "Last year the car was so unbalanced and so unstable on pretty much every circuit and into pretty much every corner. It was really very difficult for the drivers to drive it.
"Obviously, we've got to wait… but certainly talking to the drivers, and George [Russell] in particular because he droves last year's chassis, he said that it's a whole lot better than last year. So that for us is another bit of progress and that's all we wanted to show this year."
Russell's benchmark lap from the morning was significantly quicker than Williams managed in Spanish GP qualifying last year.
Watch every day of Winter Testing live on Sky Sports F1 and the Sky Sports App. The sessions run from 8am-12pm and 1pm-5pm, followed by The Story So Far featuring driver interviews and the verdict on the day.
