10 things we learned from the final F1 test

After Mercedes topped the opening Formula 1 pre-season test at Barcelona, all eyes were on Ferrari and Red Bull in week two in the hope of signs that F1's silver hegemony could be ended in 2017.

Ferrari duly upped the ante, and there are legitimate hopes of a three-horse race this season - although all is not quite as it seems on the timing screens.

FERRARI CAN GO EVEN FASTER
Scott Mitchell (@Scott Autosport)

After impressing in the opening week, Ferrari took another step forward over the last four days - to the point where Lewis Hamilton labelled it the favourite.

A picture call tell a thousand words, but a reduced engine note can be rather revealing as well. Sebastian Vettel's audible backing off exiting the final corner on the penultimate day of running did not stop him setting the quickest time of testing so far, and his 1m19.024s got tongues wagging over the sandbagging Ferrari.

The obvious assumption Ferrari had more in reserve proved accurate when Kimi Raikkonen used super-soft tyres to post a 1m18.634s on Friday morning, comfortably quicker than Mercedes or Red Bull. And then the Finn claimed he could have gone even faster.

"If we want we can go faster but that's not the purpose of the test," said Raikkonen, who made a small error at Turn 5 on his quickest lap. "There's a lot of things that we can improve and do better, but that's a part of testing.

"Compared to a year ago we feel it's much, much better in many ways."

Raikkonen did suffer a technical problem during his race simulation, though, when his sick-sounding Ferrari ground to a halt (and spun when the rear wheels locked up) late on Friday afternoon.

That and Raikkonen spinning off and making light contact with the tyres on Wednesday were small reminders that a fast Ferrari will only challenge Mercedes if it makes it to the end.

McLAREN-HONDA IS IN BIG TROUBLE
Ben Anderson (@BenAndersonAuto)

The problems are mounting up for McLaren-Honda. It seems the oil tank is no longer leaking, but pretty much everything else is breaking apart at the seams.

The engine Honda brought to the final pre-season test certainly was - vibrating so badly it started to break other parts of the car, and cause the electrical systems to fail repeatedly without warning.

Honda has spent much of the winter working on advanced combustion technology in its bid to close the gap to the leading manufacturers, but the combustion process it has created is so unstable the engine will not hold together. Apparently, one unit even ejected a piston during one of Stoffel Vandoorne's runs in the car!

The early indications suggest Honda has reverse engineered its 2017 engine, delivering an initial specification that is down on power compared to the 2016 unit, and an updated version tried at the second test that was even worse.

The car is down on power, lacking traction due to woeful driveability, and so unreliable that McLaren has completed only 30% of the work it planned to do in pre-season - equivalent to less than two and a half days of testing.

While the big teams all completed full race simulations at some point, McLaren could barely string together 10 laps in one go...

The team's racing director Eric Boullier admits relations between McLaren and Honda are now strained to the "maximum" after this terrible start to 2017.

ALONSO IS RUNNING OUT OF PATIENCE
Ben Anderson

After a disastrous first day in the new MCL32 at the first pre-season test, Fernando Alonso dismissed early questions over Honda's reliability problems as an "easy headline".

"We need to stay calm," he said. "It's eight days of testing, so let's draw conclusions after the eighth day, and let's hope they are better than today."

Now those eight days of testing are complete it is doubtful Alonso has reached any of those better conclusions he hoped for.

The double world champion completed only 89 laps across his two days in the car during the final pre-season test, as Honda's engine suffered repeated failures. The massive vibrations were rattling Alonso's brain, and no doubt rattling his confidence in the McLaren-Honda project.

When the car did run, Alonso lapped 2.755s adrift of Ferrari's outright pace, set by his former Scuderia team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.

"We have only one problem: that is the power unit," Alonso declared on day six. "The situation is far from ideal. We are a big team. We need a reaction from everyone. We need to stay united, working close to each other. But definitely a big reaction I expect from the team immediately."

Alonso signed for McLaren-Honda expecting the project to deliver him the third world championship he so desperately craves. Instead, he is facing the very real danger of having wasted another three years of his career in uncompetitive cars.

MERCEDES STILL HAS MORE TO OFFER
Scott Mitchell and Ben Anderson

Mercedes looked in better shape than it was in week one, and probably looked in worse shape by the end of this week than it really is.

Those hoping for the team's domination to end this season will be encouraged by the noises emanating from the Silver Arrows' camp this week. Hamilton continued to talk up Ferrari, saying it was "bluffing" with its pace and could go faster.

Non-executive chairman Niki Lauda said some of the new parts introduced by Mercedes this week had not delivered the performance the team was hoping for. Valtteri Bottas said there "there's some things that we definitely need to unlock".

Hamilton's first morning was compromised by some damage to the floor and although Bottas topped the second day with a 1m19.310s on the super-soft tyre, Mercedes' week was affected by inconsistencies in performance created by what Mercedes called a "lack of robustness" in parts of the floor. It also didn't complete a full race run.

On the face of it, then, reason to think Mercedes is on the back foot. But that's probably just what it wants people to think.

The engine updates it brought to Barcelona this week solved some potential reliability concerns with the turbo and compressor, and should boost the pace it showed when Hamilton completed a longer run last week that was on average just over three tenths of a second per lap slower than Vettel's equivalent run in week two.

Combine that with the suspicion that Mercedes was carrying more fuel than Ferrari, and the expectation is the champion still has the edge - but not by much.

RED BULL HAMSTRUNG BY 'MAGNIFIED' RENAULT ISSUE
Scott Mitchell and Ben Anderson

Red Bull has work to do to extract what Daniel Ricciardo called "its true pace", but it was not helped this week by a continuation of Renault's unreliability.

The squad has had to run its engine at reduced power to protect the reliability of the fragile MGU-K in the new Energy Recovery Systems.

Renault admitted this week that testing has "magnified" an issue with its engine it was aware of before the works/customer teams had even turned a wheel on track.

Works Renault driver Jolyon Palmer lost Tuesday morning's running to a precautionary engine swap, Red Bull driver Max Verstappen suffered two MGU-K problems on Wednesday, and a repeat of an ERS issue caused Palmer to stop on Thursday.

The problems meant Renault-engined cars completed 1865 laps between them over the two weeks at Barcelona, compared to 2459 for Ferrari's trio of teams and 2681 for Mercedes'.

On Red Bull's side, Ricciardo also admitted the team got "a little bit confused with some set-up things" on Thursday. These factors have combined to leave Red Bull looking a little bit adrift.

That said, Verstappen's 1m19.438s on super-softs on the final day was cause for encouragement - as is the prospect of a big step in performance when Renault introduces reliability fixes for Melbourne, and Red Bull brings its first raft of updates to what remains a very basic-looking version of the RB13.

THESE TYRES DO DEGRADE
Jonathan Noble (@NobleF1)

Formula 1's change in regulations this year has also afforded the chance for a rethink about tyre philosophy too, with Pirelli tasked to produce rubber that allow drivers to push more.

The shift has prompted plenty of talk that we will be back to single pit stop races. Line up that prospect with the fact that overtaking is likely to be harder and that does not sound like we'll have much excitement on Sunday afternoons.

But after a first week of testing where Pirelli was unsure about the levels of degradation, it emerged from the second one convinced that there will remain some drop off in performance this year - even if not as much as hoped.

Pirelli said its target was to hit a two-second drop off in performance over 10 laps. Current indications point to the tyres having a 1.5 seconds drop over that distance.

With fuel burn only accounting for a half second improvement in that window, it does suggest that there should be some drop off this year, which could increase when performance of the 2017 cars ramps up and more demands are put through the tyres.

In fact, Lewis Hamilton went as far as suggesting that things could actually be pretty similar to last year when we get to races in warmer conditions.

"You cannot push 100% every lap. The tyres still degrade," he said. "The tyres are a lot harder than last year. And they are definitely a little bit less prone to melting...overheating. But they still do.

"And it is not even really hot here, so in places like Malaysia we will still have serious drop off and still have degradation as we have always have."

WILLIAMS SPRINGS A SURPRISE
Scott Mitchell

Nobody would have had money on a Red Bull driver hoping Williams had shown its hand on the opening day this week. But Felipe Massa's pace had Daniel Ricciardo a little worried.

Prior to a 1m19.726s on super-soft rubber, Massa posted a 1m20.084s on softs, which compared favourably to the best soft-shod times up to that point. Then he made his mark again on Wednesday by posting the fifth-best time of the test, a 1m19.420s on ultra-softs.

Williams performance chief Rob Smedley reckons these 2017 cars are manna from heaven for Massa: "The more front end you can give Felipe, as long as you have a solid rear, then the more he will be able to deliver from his driving style."

Is Williams at the same level as Red Bull and Mercedes as the times suggest? Probably not. This is probably Williams at its peak, and we've already highlighted that the other two have room to improve.

But this was a huge turnaround from being in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons in the first week, thanks to two spins and a crash for its wealthy teenage rookie Lance Stroll and the fact his shunt made Williams lose the last day of the opening test.

In week two there were no such problems. Massa logged 168 laps on day five and Williams was in triple-digits for the rest of the week. Stroll got on with the job at hand, though a mistake on his performance run on ultra-softs meant he was left further down the timesheets than he should have been.

RACE STARTS COULD BE A LOTTERY
Jonathan Noble

While much of the focus of the rule changes this year has been on new cars and wider tyres, something that will also be new in 2017 is a tougher start procedure for drivers.

At Barcelona this week, the extent of the new rules became clear, as a host of drivers predicted a bigger shake-up away from the grid this year.

The main change is that the clutch paddles must now have a linear relationship with the clutch torque control - so clever maps can't be used to ensure that drivers dump it into a rough window and computers take care of the rest.

Allied to that, there are now physical limits imposed on where the clutch paddle can be set against other controls to ensure drivers cannot use their fingers to find reference points.

With a huge number of practice starts tried out over the Barcelona test, the consensus was of much less chance of drivers getting the perfect getaway each time in 2017.

As Kevin Magnussen said: "We will see some guys getting a massive one and gaining loads of positions, and other ones losing out massively. There will be some spread."

THE MIDFIELD IS A FREE-FOR-ALL
Scott Mitchell

That spread could be particularly significant to the messy midfield fight, where there are several teams in the mix.

Williams, Toro Rosso, Renault, Force India and Haas lapped within a second of each other in testing, with Massa's 1m19.4s at the head of the queue and new Haas man Kevin Magnussen's 1m20.504s at the rear.

There are different pluses and minuses across the group, too. Williams had superb reliability and did look strong on track. Force India didn't seem as comfortable in week two, with Sergio Perez admitting it had uncovered "a lot of weaknesses", but it logged a serious amount of mileage.

The Renault team and its customer Toro Rosso appear to have produced compliant chassis but were undone by reliability throughout testing. Haas had a stoppage on the final day but Karun Chandhok reckon its VF-17 looked quite driveabale and he placed it "ahead of the likes of Sauber and McLaren, and genuinely in the [midfield] fight".

Toro Rosso driver Carlos Sainz Jr identified Force India, Renault and Williams as his team's closest rivals but also eloquently added: "And with Haas, thanks to the jump from the Ferrari engine, fifth place is going to be extremely complicated."

THE DRIVERS ARE MUCH HAPPIER
Jonathan Noble

One of the reasons for making Formula 1's cars faster was not only to make it more appealing for the audiences - but to make them challenging for drivers as well.

For too long the negativity that has surrounded grand prix racing has been fuelled by drivers moaning about the way that racing has evolved - whether it was tyre saving, fuel saving, thermal degradation, or simply just being too damn slow.

But with the fastest lap from winter testing, Kimi Raikkonen's 1m18.634s, being within striking distance of the best ever lap around Barcelona's current configuration, it was hard to find anybody criticising the cars any more.

The drivers seemed to relish what they have been given and even Fernando Alonso - despite all the woes that he is facing with Honda - dropped the first hint that he could enjoy driving F1 machinery again.

But the best summary came from Nico Hulkenberg, who concurred that one of the driving messages of the GPDA - that happy drivers equals happy F1 - could be about to ring true.

"If you go faster it's always more spectacular," he said. "If you go flat through Turn 3 it's a hell of a ride. It's pretty fucking cool."