F1 News
Testing round up - Bottas top as Racing Point impress
F1 has finally returned and although we aren't quite racing yet, testing will do just fine for now and we got our first real look at the new cars in action on Wednesday morning as the cars took to the Circuit de Catalunya for day one of winter testing.
It was Valtteri Bottas who set the fastest time overall with a 1:17:3, but it was George Russell who was the first driver on track, briefly going to number one on the timesheets.
At one point early on in the session we saw a top three of Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon, which would certainly raise eyebrows in Australia!
But it didn't stay that way as Max Verstappen and Bottas set quick times to put themselves at the top. Perez stuck around and set similar times to the frontrunning duo as Ferrari's Charles Leclerc was further back, ending the session in seventh.
Sebastian Vettel was supposed to be driving for Ferrari today but he has been struck down by illness, leading to Leclerc swapping days with his German teammate.
So we can say Mercedes still look good and the Racing Point looks promising, but with just one session of six days worth of testing done, there's plenty of time for everything to change!
This afternoon will see Daniel Ricciardo, Nicholas Latifi, Lance Stroll, Lewis Hamilton and Antonio Giovinazzi switching with their teammates for the afternoon session, with the other five teams sticking with the same driver.
Here is the order of the top ten from the first session of testing:
1) Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes)
2) Sergio Perez (Racing Point)
3) Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
4) Carlos Sainz (McLaren)
5) Esteban Ocon (Renault)
6) George Russell (Williams)
7) Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)
8) Robert Kubica (Alfa Romeo)
9) Kevin Magnussen (Haas)
10) Daniil Kvyat (Alpha Tauri)