While the focus of pre-season testing isn’t usually pure pace, it’s still the first time that we get to see the cars on the track and the first sense of how the cars will compare on raw pace against each other in the upcoming 2019 season. Which team produced the fastest car in pre-season testing?
Unsurprisingly, Ferrari and Mercedes both had the fastest cars in testing and were more than half a second quicker than the rest of the grid. Although Ferrari recorded the fastest lap time in the test of 1m16.221s, Mercedes responded with an extremely close with a time just 0.003s slower. Needless to say, these are the two teams with the best shot at competing for the championship titles this year.
Red Bull struggled for pace in the test, failing to fall within the 1:16’s and being ranked seventh fastest of testing. This is well below their sister team Toro Rosso, who gave Renault some close competition and was able to lap slightly faster than McLaren.
Racing Point was slightly off the pace of their competitors, finding themselves around half a second back from the mid-teams and around 0.3 seconds behind Alfa Romeo. But it was Williams that found themselves at the bottom of the order, being the only team to fall into the 1:18’s and showing their stunted start to the season may mean that they have a lot of work ahead of them this year.
