Daniil Kvyat’s Toro Rosso-Honda was quickest at the end of the third day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.
The F1 returnee waited until the final quarter-hour of the test before producing a 1’17.704 which stands as the best time of the test so far. He edged Kimi Raikkonen’s Alfa Romeo from the top spot by just five-hundredths of a second.Ferrari, the pace-setters of the first two days, brought their session to a close half an hour early. Sebastian Vettel set the fourth-fastest time, just under two-tenths shy of Daniel Ricciardo’s best effort in the Renault.
The session came to an early end when Romain Grosjean’s car came to a stop on track with a loss of hydraulic pressure. It was the third red flag of the day, all of which were caused by Haas stoppages, two for Grosjean and one for test driver Pietro Fittipaldi. Grosjean will be given an extra morning in the car tomorrow to make up for his lost time before handing over to Kevin Magnussen.
Despite covering a modest number of laps early in the day, Max Verstappen racked up over 100 laps in his Red Bull and lowered their best time of the test so far. Carlos Sainz Jnr also had problems early on – he missed the first two hours of running due to a gearbox problem on his McLaren, then had a high-speed spin – but covered 90 laps.
Mercedes continued to keep a low profile on the times sheets but Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas covered a mammoth 182 laps between them – equivalent to two-and-three-quarter race distances.
There was relief for Williams as their FW42 finally arrived at the track and, shortly after the lunch break, turned its first laps in George Russell’s hands. He covered 23 laps as the team conducted initial checks of its new car.
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2019 pre-season test day three lap times
| Pos. | Car number | Driver | Team | Model | Best time | Gap | Laps | Tyres |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 26 | Daniil Kvyat | Toro Rosso | STR14 | 1’17.704 | 137 | C5 | |
| 2 | 7 | Kimi Raikkonen | Alfa Romeo | C38 | 1’17.762 | 0.058 | 138 | C5 |
| 3 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | Renault | RS19 | 1’18.164 | 0.460 | 80 | C4 |
| 4 | 5 | Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | SF90 | 1’18.350 | 0.646 | 134 | C3 |
| 5 | 33 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | RB15 | 1’18.787 | 1.083 | 109 | C3 |
| 6 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | Renault | RS19 | 1’18.800 | 1.096 | 63 | C4 |
| 7 | 8 | Romain Grosjean | Haas | VF-19 | 1’19.060 | 1.356 | 69 | C3 |
| 8 | 51 | Pietro Fittipaldi | Haas | VF-19 | 1’19.249 | 1.545 | 48 | C4 |
| 9 | 55 | Carlos Sainz Jnr | McLaren | MCL34 | 1’19.354 | 1.650 | 90 | C3 |
| 10 | 11 | Sergio Perez | Racing Point | RP19 | 1’20.102 | 2.398 | 67 | C3 |
| 11 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | Mercedes | W10 | 1’20.693 | 2.989 | 88 | C3 |
| 12 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes | W10 | 1’20.818 | 3.114 | 94 | Prototype |
| 13 | 63 | George Russell | Williams | FW42 | 1’25.625 | 7.921 | 23 | C3 |
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2019 F1 season
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MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
20th February 2019, 17:22
Is there really no risk at all that a car has some nasty habits if driven on the edge that the teams might want to find out about before Melbourne? I mean they must be sandbagging so freaking hard right now, i can almost visualize Vettel coasting in and looking in disbelieve on the timing screens when he sees Hamilton went even slower.
hahostolze (@hahostolze)
20th February 2019, 17:25
the sandbagging is not so much in the corners, it’s the straights. They don’t string together proper sectors for one, but they also constantly lift on the straights, or don’t engage DRS (worth half a second or more), or both. The visual aspect and GPS data are worth far more than the timing screens.
So the teams do hit the edge where they need to, it just doesn’t necessarily translate to the pace we receive
Sujeeth (@sjct83)
20th February 2019, 17:30
Can we have the compound used while setting the fastest times against each drivers? Or the full data is not available?
JV
20th February 2019, 17:51
Times set during testing are meaningless, knowing the xompound doesnt add anything
anon
20th February 2019, 20:13
I wouldn’t say that the times are completely meaningless, just that most observers usually tend to focus on the wrong times when writing about the tests.
Predictably, most writers tend to focus just on the headline fastest times, since it is the easiest metric to report – as you note, though, it is the one that is generally the least useful. However, what is potentially more meaningful are the results from the longer runs that the teams carry out – say, a 15 or 20 lap run, which roughly equates to what the teams would do during a single race stint – with the most useful being a full race simulation, which usually tends to occur towards the latter part of the testing season.
Now, there have been individuals who have been able to process the results from those longer stints to obtain some useful information on potential race performance – however, that is a much more time consuming job and does require a lot more statistical analysis of the raw data, and generally it does rely on having multiple sets of long run data from a team to help benchmark the data.
In short – headlines times are fairly meaningless, but long run data is potentially of some value if processed properly (though usually is overlooked in favour of the simpler headline times).
tim
20th February 2019, 18:03
KVY – C5
RAI – C5
RIC – C4
VET – C3
VER – C3
HUL – C4
GRO – C3
FIT – C4
SAI – C3
PER – C3
BOT – C3
HAM – PROTO
RUS – C3
Lools like Mercedes already requested Pirelli to develop special tyres again (jk)
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
20th February 2019, 18:12
Alfa used special C38.
formevic (@formevic)
20th February 2019, 18:31
Valentine livery gives you tenths 😋
Prvn
20th February 2019, 17:30
Everyone is so close.. dont know how the session will start..
Velocityboy (@velocityboy)
20th February 2019, 17:39
Only 23 laps for Williams after delaying their car for two days. Even though there is a lot of running left to do, I for one am very concerned about their future.
faulty
20th February 2019, 18:45
Shakedown, playing it safe, me thinks.
Diego (@ironcito)
20th February 2019, 21:11
They only ran in the afternoon, so half a day. I read that they’re missing aero parts, so no use in testing/developing aero with whatever stopgap parts they’re using now. Add a few issues that they probably encountered, and that’s it. Little running.
Rick D. (@partsguy20)
20th February 2019, 17:45
Can we have a running lap tally for all of the teams to see what kind of mileage they’ve accumulated so far throughout the whole test?
Also, do we know if any of the teams have changed power units at all or are they all running the same units they started with on Monday?
MtlRacer (@mtlracer)
20th February 2019, 18:05
Too bad Mild Seven no longer exists as a tobacco brand or we could make jokes about Kvyat’s 77.7 second lap time!
Jay Menon (@jaymenon10)
20th February 2019, 23:47
The sorry state of Williams is really sad.
Lets hope they do a Brawn, highly unlikely, but lets hope.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
21st February 2019, 7:55
I think it’s great that Daniil produced such a good time. I hope he continues doing this into the racing season.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
21st February 2019, 8:00
I must apologise to Daniil and to Honda, I didn’t realise his time of 1’17.704 was better than the official race lap record of 1:18.441 by Daniel Ricciardo. I can’t be sure, but maybe the Honda powered cars are better than we expected them to be.