Just 2 days of 2019 F1 pre-season testing left to go in Barcelona. Here’s the highlights from Day 6:
And the end-of-day times and lap counts:
Clearly an excellent all round day for Sainz and McLaren. His 1:17.144 stands as the fastest time in pre-season testing so far this year. And having set it early on in the morning session, it remained the only 1:17 time on the board until late in the afternoon when it was joined by Sergio’s +0.698 time.
A extra big plus on the McLaren testing scorecard was their joint lap count topping P1 yesterday as well, despite the water pressure problem that Sainz experienced soon after setting that top time. 130 laps on the day, pleasing matched by Robert Kubica in the still-playing-catch-up Williams, and Max Verstappen’s 128 laps for the Honda powered Red Bull. The top team lap count for the day again went to Mercedes with Hamilton and Bottas combining a number of race simulation drives to complete a total of 176 laps.
Biggest talking point for the day was (obviously) the Sebastian Vettel off circuit excursion midway through the morning session. The heavy impact crash necessitated a trip to the circuit medical centre for the German and a 40-minute halt to proceedings to repair the barriers.
The cause has not been detailed, although images seen by Motorsport.com revealed the left side of the front wing was making contact with the track as Vettel went off.
Vettel said he did not know “much more than everyone knows” when asked during Wednesday’s lunch break what happened to cause the crash.
“By the feeling, there was an issue with the front left corner,” he said. "From there, there was nothing I could have done to avoid the impact.
"I wasn’t in control anymore and went more or less straight into the barriers. We are flat out trying to understand [what happened].
Isolating the cause of the failure amongst the heavily damaged front-end of the car must be very frustrating for the team. They spent the remainder of the day investigating, rebuilding and analysing things. All of which resulted in Charles Leclerc’s scheduled afternoon session being spent in the garage. They did manage to get the car moving again enough for a single installation lap late in the day, but that was it. Leclerc’s driving time this week has been seriously hampered and the team has decided to revert to their full day per driver approach for today and tomorrow.
Ferrari noted that it “has decided to have its drivers do a complete day each at the wheel, so that the work can progress in a more linear fashion," adding: “Charles will drive tomorrow, before handing over to Sebastian for the final day.”
Hopefully the youngster can get a decent and full day on track today on his last opportunity before Australia.
