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F1 2019 Pre-Season Testing – Week 1 Recap

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Toro Rosso Honda during 2019 F1 Pre Season Week 1
The teams use green flow-viz paint to test the cars’ aerodynamics
Photo: FORMULA 1 | YouTube

The first week of pre-season testing for the 2019 Formula One World Championship has come to a close, and now the teams and drivers are heading home for the weekend for a much deserved break — or more likely heading back to the office to go over the data and identify areas of improvement.

Lap times were a little all over the place throughout the four testing days, though as usual the lap time leaderboard is of virtually no relevance at this stage, as it does not reveal what fuel loads and engine modes the teams were using.

More important are the number of laps the teams are able to complete, as they tend to be an indicator of reliability especially right after a major regulation change. Since we’re now in the sixth year of the turbo hybrid era, most of the teams have achieved a reasonable degree of reliability, though one of them did stand out: Williams.


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F1 2019 Pre Season Week 1 Results

Nobody is quite sure what is happening at Williams except that it cannot be good. The team failed to even bring an operational car to the track on the first two days and after that was only able to complete a total of 88 laps, fewer than anybody else during the same period.

Mercedes and Ferrari continue to look both the quickest and the reliable, having both put their cars through more than 1,700 miles of testing already. The new Honda engine in the Red Bull seems to be running well too, and the British team claims it has never before felt more encouraged about progress at this stage of winter testing.

If you’d like a look at the data yourself, check out the above table that includes all of the laps the drivers, teams, and engines have completed during the first week of 2019 pre-season testing. Stay tuned for the week 2 recap for the complete data.


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