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F1 testing round-up: Ferrari fastest, Mercedes tops mileage chart

Ferrari backed up its early promise in Formula 1 pre-season testing by ending the second week at Barcelona a comfortable favourite for the start of the 2019 season.

Renault's Nico Hulkenberg had been fastest overall in the opening test on Pirelli's softest C5 tyre, but Ferrari's main rivals singled the team out after to an impressive first four days with its SF90 2019 car.

Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel backed up those predictions by going fastest on the final two days of testing on Thursday and Friday respectively, as all but one driver set their best overall time on the C5 tyre in the second half of the week.

Vettel ended the fortnight with a fastest time of 1m16.221s, his final-day effort bettering team-mate Leclerc's Thursday time by 0.010 seconds.

Week two was not trouble-free for Ferrari, as Leclerc lost time on the opening day while the team carried out cooling checks before Vettel crashed a day later.

Those setbacks meant the team recorded the eighth-highest lap tally in week two - ahead only of Racing Point and Red Bull - and was 181 short of the 580 that main rival Mercedes achieved, the best part of 200 less than it managed in the first week.

Five-time world champion Lewis Hamilton also beat Leclerc's time with a late run on the C5 compound on Friday afternoon to end the test second fastest, as Mercedes carried out performance runs with both drivers.

Speaking before his Friday afternoon run, Hamilton said he thought Ferrari could be as much as half a second clear of Mercedes.

Behind Leclerc, Hamilton's team-mate Valtteri Bottas was fourth in the combined times with a 1m16.561s set on the final day.

Mercedes introduced a heavily revised aerodynamic package for the start of week two of testing, and spent the majority of the opening three days focusing on long runs.

Week one pacesetter Hulkenberg was best of the rest in week two with a 1m16.843s set late in the day on Friday, with team-mate Daniel Ricciardo three tenths and a further seven places further back. The Renault pair had a productive week, completing a second-highest tally of 528 laps.

Toro Rosso appeared to be close to its performance limit, but debutant Alexander Albon and team-mate Daniil Kvyat still achieved impressive times and ended up sixth and seventh fastest respectively.

McLaren prioritised performance runs early on, as Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz Jr topped the first two days. Sainz ended up the faster of the two come the end of the week, with Haas's Romain Grosjean separating the Spaniard from team-mate Norris in the combined times.

Haas did not conduct attention-grabbing runs but its underlying pace again appeared strong. Kevin Magnussen was 15th, but his tally of 278 laps was bettered only by the 331 Hamilton achieved.

The shine came off Red Bull's strong start slightly towards the end of the second week.

Pierre Gasly was the faster of the team's drivers with a 1m17.091s set on the penultimate day, but was limited to 65 laps when he crashed heavily at Campsa after putting a wheel on the grass approaching the fast Turn 9 right-hander.

That affected Red Bull's preparations for the final day and, although Max Verstappen was able to head out a little after half an hour into Friday's morning session, his running was done by just after 11am local time as the team's desire to complete gearbox checks limited him to 29 laps.

Verstappen's best time of 1m17.709s was set on the mid-range C3 tyre, and left him ahead of only three drivers - the Racing Point of Sergio Perez and Williams duo George Russell and Robert Kubica.

Perez ended Wednesday by describing Racing Point's running as "very limited" and declaring he needed a strong final day with a "a lot of mileage in my pocket, [and to] try different fuel loads and so on", but finally cleared 100 laps on Friday, ending up 18th in the times.

His team-mate Lance Stroll, who cleared the same lap target a day earlier then stopped with a sensor issue, was 14th in the combined order.

After its late start to testing, Williams had a productive second week and completed the fourth-highest lap total but continued to struggle to match the rest for pace.

Russell's day-three time was four tenths slower than Perez's effort, while Kubica ended the test slowest and said he had "lost another day".

Alfa Romeo was the focus of less attention in week two but continued to demonstrate the encouraging potential it showed a week earlier. Drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi ended up 13th an 16th in the combined times.

Zdroj: autosport.com