Barcelona test verdict: The final word on opening week of F1 2020
Whether you look at the headline times or the news headlines themselves, there's no escaping the fact that Mercedes dominated the first week of pre-season F1 2020 testing.
The team led the opening day, caused a stir on day two when its dual-axis steering system was spotted for the first time, and returned to the top of the times on Friday's final day. Valtteri Bottas's week-best 1m15.732s lap was more than 1.3 seconds faster than the best a non-Mercedes driver managed.
In contrast to that performance – and its own showing 12 months earlier – Ferrari has been considerably muted. Even worse was to follow as its day three running was blighted by an engine failure.
In our video, Alex Kalinauckas is joined by Motorsport.com F1 Editor Jonathan Noble and Autosport F1 Reporter Luke Smith to discuss the key talking points at the halfway stage in testing, including why Mercedes appears a clear favourite for now, how much Ferrari might be holding back on straightline speed, and the latest developments around Mercedes' DAS device.
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About this article
| Series | Formula 1 |
| Event | Barcelona February testing I |
| Session | Date | Content | |
| FP1 | | ||
| FP2 | | ||
| FP3 | | ||
| QU | | ||
| Race | |
