Where Mercedes edged a bulletproof start to testing

Well, Mercedes certainly won the first day of Formula 1 2020.

Beyond that statement come all the usual testing caveats: it's the first day, fuel and ballast loads are unknown, the track will rubber in. All the fence-sitting hits, basically.

The headline takeaways are that Mercedes topped the morning running with Valtteri Bottas on a 1m17.313s, and then Lewis Hamilton marched on in the afternoon after taking over the W11 to bring the benchmark down to a 1m16.976s. In total, the duo completed the most laps on 173.

A year ago, Ferrari was the clear day one 'winner'. Sebastian Vettel led the way from the off and put in a mammoth 169 laps - the most for any team. But, even though the Scuderia radiated positivity, we all know how that turned out...

While there's nothing that guarantees Mercedes' dominance on day one in 2020 will translate into the top of the pecking order in Melbourne, the year-on-year comparison is interesting.

Last year, Mercedes arrived with what it knew (but no one else did) wouldn't be the car it would take to Australia. In 2020, the W11 is an evolution that will itself evolve by the time the first race rolls around. So, Mercedes' approach to testing is naturally different thanks to the regulation stability.

The gentle February sun slowly warmed up the Barcelona track throughout Wednesday, and, as is always the case, the teams switched from installation and early fast runs in the morning, to longer running in the afternoon. While Hamilton found a spare moment to set the day's best lap time, he also set a string of consistently fast laps over notable periods.

After running on the yellow-walled C3 Pirellis (the median compound in the company's pre-season offering), he switched to the C2 hard (but not the hardest, C1) tyres. Over a seven-lap stint around 3pm local time, with outliers removed, he set an average lap time of 1m18.878s.

Mercedes did more running overall - first with a total lap count of 173 compared to 132 - while Leclerc spent chunks of the afternoon in the garage as Ferrari worked on the SF1000

An hour later over eight laps he had 1m18.905s, which becomes 1m18.735s when one tour in the 1m20s is removed. Then, approaching 5pm, he bettered his C2 average to a 1m18.723s - although again this has a random 1m20s taken out.

What was significant about the penultimate run was Hamilton's consistency. Only on that 1m20s outlier was he outside the 1m18s, which suggests the W11 immediately allowed him to find a rhythm and balance with which he was happy.

To put this into context, let's bring in Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who also spent time logging longer runs on the C2 rubber around the same period. A third run over seven laps that he slotted in around 4pm produced an average of 1m19.634s.

Mercedes vs Red Bull on C2s

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc logged his mid-afternoon longer runs on the C3s. A first-run average over nine laps came in at 1m22.178s, with another one an hour later (that he started just before 4pm) resulting in an average of 1m22.210s. Hamilton's nine-lap run on the C3s mentioned above came in at an average of 1m19.348s.

Mercedes vs Ferrari on C3s

That is quite a spread between Mercedes and Ferrari, but, as we can only stress, we don't know the precise fuel loads each driver was carrying.

Looking across the field, the longer runs fit within a five-second window across all tyre compounds. For example, McLaren's Carlos Sainz Jr completed a mammoth stint on the hardest C1 compound where he regularly lapped in the 1m23s bracket, which is about what we'd expect from a car fat with fuel.

It could be then that Mercedes had Hamilton lapping towards the lower end of the fuel loads on longer runs, while Ferrari fits towards the higher-end fuel level estimation. But Mercedes did more running overall - first with a total lap count of 173 compared to 132 - while Leclerc spent chunks of the afternoon in the garage as Ferrari worked on the SF1000.

When asked about this at the day's conclusion, Leclerc said: "no issues, we were just working on the car". As he addressed the media, Leclerc was calm and serious - but not overly downbeat. He just seemed to not be giving a lot away.

"We changed our approach a little bit compared to last year," he said after the Ferrari's early 2019 testing cheer was mentioned.

"Last year the testing was great, but the first race was a bit less great. I think we've learned a few things on this, and this year we decided to focus more on ourselves, trying to learn the car as much as possible in these first few days, and then focus on performance a bit later on.

"We'll see if that pays off."

At Red Bull, Verstappen's long run times are closer to Hamilton's, but the significant caveat to his performances is the two spins he suffered throughout the afternoon. Both occurred at the 90-degree downhill right of Turn 13, with Verstappen dropping his left-front into the gravel on the outside, and clipping the kerb on the inside, to spin the car in the respective incidents.

Considering the struggles Racing Point has endured over recent seasons thanks to the financial turmoil of the end of the Force India era, it's a very promising start

"I touched once the gravel I think, that is why I spun," he said afterwards.

"And once I lost it in the second corner. These things can happen trying to find the limits with the car and what we can do. Luckily [there was] no damage, which at the end of the day is the most important thing."

More happily for Red Bull fans, Verstappen's feedback on his first day in the RB16 was that it is "fast everywhere" and that "reliability seems even better - so that is all very positive".

Away from the top three teams, Sergio Perez put Racing Point - with its very familiar looking new RP20 - third.

The Silverstone-based team, which is targeting fourth place in the 2020 constructors' championship, can take early encouragement from the ease with which Perez seemed to slot in amongst the frontrunners - although, again, this is just the start of testing.

But considering the struggles Racing Point has endured over recent seasons thanks to the financial turmoil of the end of the Force India era, it's a very promising start.

This may well explain team principal Otmar Szafnauer's bullish target, and Perez's evident optimism at the team's livery launch earlier this week. Although Lance Stroll finished 0.907s adrift of his team-mate's best effort, he nevertheless added 52 laps to the teams 110 total.

Williams can be very pleased with its start to 2020 - especially compared to its nightmare of 12 months ago. George Russell led the field out of the pits - when at the opening test last year, the team missed the first two full days - and was positively bouncing in the lunchbreak press conference.

Deputy team principal Claire Williams said that Russell hitting the track first "lays to rest some of the ghosts of last year", while Dave Robson - Williams's head of vehicle performance - explained the reason why Russell took nearly two hours to set a time while regularly visiting the pits was because he was "collecting aero data in several different configurations".

Nicholas Latifi took over the FW43 for the afternoon, and Williams ended the day seventh in the pecking order with 136 laps on the board. Another case of 'what a difference a year makes...'

McLaren looks very solid. Sainz made an early switch to long runs in the afternoon and simply pounded around on the C1s. He finished the day on 161 laps completed, 0.866s adrift of Hamilton's best effort in the headline time-stakes.

"We hit the ground running this morning, we were into our run plan very quickly, and the positive thing is that we completed every single lap that we had planned for," said Sainz.

"Basically we couldn't do more laps because there were no more tyres available, we didn't have a single problem in the car of reliability, which means we ended the day just doing pitstop practice and starts, with not much more to do.

"It's a very basic car at the moment, what we have on track, a car that allows us to do the mileage that we did today, and I'm not too worried about performance yet because we're going to bring a few new bits during the future."

Remarkably, even given the relative maturity of the V6 turbo hybrid regulations, there were no red flag stoppages on the opening day. Visible reliability was the theme of the day as every team managed to complete over 100 laps, and Barcelona's recovery crews were able to enjoy a relaxing day, with Verstappen's offs the most dramatic moments.

For one last time, this is just the start and any data and times come with a healthy dose of meaninglessness. Nevertheless, it seems that no team is completely scrabbling at the start of F1 2020.