Hamilton leads Mercedes 1-2 on final day of F1 testing
Having not really featured towards the top of the timing sheets during the first two days, Mercedes flexed its muscles on Friday as George Russell headed the morning session, before Hamilton produced a new benchmark in the afternoon.
Hamilton, who lost out on the 2021 world title to Max Verstappen in the controversial Abu Dhabi season finale, laid down a marker to the rest of the field with a succession of fastest laps in the closing stages of the final day.
The seven-time world champion initially posted a 1m19.141s on the C4 compound to better Russell’s effort on C5s by a tenth, before Hamilton himself strapped on a set of Pirelli’s softest available compound to improve by a further 0.003s with a 1m19.138s.
Hamilton’s late surge to the top came after the circuit dried up following an artificial wet-weather tyre test conducted by Pirelli.
Just behind the Mercedes pair came the two Red Bulls, with Sergio Perez's lap on C4 tyres getting him within half a second of Hamilton’s pace, while reigning world champion Verstappen’s morning effort was good enough to keep him fourth, some six-tenths down.
Half of the grid suffered reliability woe on the last day of running in Spain, with Alpine, Haas, Aston Martin, AlphaTauri and Alfa Romeo all failing to re-appear after the lunch break.
Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel ended the day fifth in the timesheets but a stoppage and subsequent fire prevented him from taking part in the final session.
It was a similar story for Fernando Alonso, who caused the first of five red flags on Friday when he ground to a halt early on Friday morning. Alpine later revealed a hydraulics issue led to a fire which meant the team had to end its day prematurely.
Reliability issues prevented Mick Schumacher from getting out for Haas, which ran an all-white livery on Nikita Mazepin’s car in the morning after removing its Uralkali livery in response to Russia’s invasion on Ukraine.
Similarly, Yuki Tsunoda and Valtteri Bottas were unable to take part in the afternoon running after Pierre Gasly crashed the AlphaTauri and Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou triggered two red flags.
The Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, Williams duo of Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi, and McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo completed the rest of the top 10.
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