Well there you go then. 1:16.658 for Leclerc, on the C5 tyre.
EDIT: Make that a 1:16.361, also on the softest tyre.
EDIT: And faster again! 1:16.231.
We barely got into the 16’s, and now the 15’s are already under threat. That 16.2 is just a tenth or so off last year’s pole time.
And Mercedes persist with not bothering to show their hand. Even Ferrari are now going for some laptime.
I’m sitting here optimistically hoping 5 teams will challenge for wins this year. Making F1 a bit more fun to watch.
That would be awesome, unlikely though it may be.
Two possibilities, either they are having issues or they’re sandbagging
Red Flag!
Gasly off in a bigish way on T8/T9.
Difficult to tell from mobile phone shots of grainy CCTV images, but clear some heavy damage to the TecPro barriers again suggests a sizeable impact. Gasly is okay, out of the car and walking around.
Yikes. That could be costly, especially if they are short on certain spare parts.
Well the track wont be green flagged until the Tepco barriers have been fixed.
Looks like he just lost the back there. Managed to scrub a fair bit of speed off too.
Well that was quick. Session is green again.
Impressive, it looked like he did more damage but its great that they can fix it fast
Teeheehee… Let’s see if it’s true come Melbourne.
Right, that’s day 7 of the 8 pre-season testing days done. Here’s a look at how the teams and drivers got on today:
After a slow start, it was a Ferrari FTW sort of day 
Charles Leclerc got to spend the full day with his new car, and he made the most of the opportunity. His fastest lap time of 1:16.231 was over half a second quicker than Toro Rosso’s Alex Albon, the only other driver to get into the 1:16s. Leclerc also made up for the time he lost yesterday after Vettel’s shunt by putting in 138 laps, just 2 fewer than lap leader George Russell.
One spot on Leclerc’s otherwise excellent day to be aware of though… about 20 minutes before the end of the day he triggered the last red flag of the day when he stopped on circuit. He never reappeared after that. The only other stoppers today was Lance Stroll’s Racing Point car which also seemed to have a mechanical issue late in the day.
The big red flag moment though came when Pierre Gasly seemed to lose the back end of his Red Bull going into the high speed Turn 9. The Frenchman crashed quite heavily into the barriers, but was able to comfortably walk away and was soon cleared by the medical centre. He had managed 65 completed laps at that point, one of which was fast enough to put him P4 on the timesheets.
The 140 laps from Russell must be very pleaseing to the Williams team - there may not be blistering pace there (yet?) but the reliability of the car is looking to be on par with the other teams. On the subject of reliabilty, the Mercedes duo again showed off the almost bullet-proof reliability of their car by adding another 181 (Hamilton 85, Bottas 96) laps to their mileage records.
Romain Grosjean had his afternoon session behind the wheel of the Haas cut short as the team spent time fixing an exhaust issue that had been picked up when teammate Kevin Magnussen had the car in the morning. He eventually managed to complete just 16 laps before the circuit closed for the day.
Formula1.com will bring out it’s daily highlights package soon enough, which I’ll add here then.
And then there was one. Just one last day of 2019 pre-season testing. Will anyone top Leclerc’s time and punch into the 1:15 zone? Will Mercedes take the sandbags out and do that 1:14 mic drop lap? Will Williams find the hidden pace in the car and top the times? Will the McLaren dreamers have the final say at the end of the day? Nah, probably not, to all of that. But hell, who doesn’t love a dreamer?!
Leclerc said in so many words that his lap wasn’t flat-out; so while the time was pretty impressive, they have more in the bag.
Heard that too. In fairness though, he did also suggest that no-one else was going flat out either, so it’s all a bit swings and roundabouts.
Going to be AFK for most of today, so looking to you guys for occasional updates.
