What we've learned from the first F1 test

The two weeks of Formula 1 pre-season testing might each be a day shorter than last year, but there's been no shortage of talking points to delve into from the opening three days of 2020 running.

Eyebrows were raised at the absence of any red-flag periods for almost the entirety of the first two days but, with only six days of running available before the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in mid-March, was it really a surprise to see all of the teams hit the ground running and rack up the miles quite so quickly?

It's inevitable that next week's second test will answer more questions and make the competitive picture that much clearer, but here are the key takeaways our team on the ground were left with at the end of the first week at Barcelona.

Innovation isn't dead

Tim Wright, Autosport Technical Consultant

It appears that Mercedes has a brand new trick up its sleeve, using a moveable steering wheel (fore and aft) - also known as DAS (dual-axis steering).

Onboard footage shows the steering wheel moving toward the driver once on the straight and this reduces the front-wheel toe, which is advantageous. Under braking at the end of the straight the wheel moves away from the driver, increasing the toe. Therefore, in the slow speed the wheels toe out more to give more grip, but on the long straight the toe reduces.

This must be hydraulically operated due to the loads involved, possibly by a button on the steering wheel so that the driver can select when to use it. Hamilton was seen pushing a marker button on the steering wheel at the end of the straight which gives the engineers the point at which he operated the DAS. The steering wheel connects to the column in the usual way, so the mechanism is further down.

I believe that the system is built into the steering rack in some way so that the 'dual axis' system can transfer the fore/aft motion to the trackrods, but something decouples because they have to travel in opposite directions instead of the normal steering action. The only components that affect toe are the trackrods, which are traditionally attached to the rack, so somewhere either the centre of the rack expands and contracts, or something else is at the end of the rack where the trackrods are attached.

Red Bull, meanwhile, has gone from a multi-link top wishbone, to a multi-link bottom wishbone. Because the lower wishbone is more heavily loaded, this in effect can save weight due to having two joints and bolts which can be smaller.

It looks from the layout that with the position of the steering arm being further away from the bottom wishbone, it induces more castor on lock, this being a slightly different way to lower the front on lock instead of the pushrod linkage.

Interestingly, Red Bull has not adapted the higher outboard top wishbone mounting, like Mercedes, which is why the lower wishbone mounting has been split into two to take the extra load.

Mercedes is ahead

Alex Kalinauckas, Autosport Grand Prix Editor @Nauckas

What a difference a year makes for Mercedes. This time last year, all the indicators suggested the team had work to do to maintain its place at the top of the Formula 1 pecking order during the switch to the current front wing rules. Then test two happened and, well, you know the rest by now.

This time, Mercedes will surely be leaving the opening test buoyed by its performance over the first three days.

Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton set the two best times of the week on Friday, recording respective 1m15.732s and 1m16.516s laps on the softest C5 tyre. Bottas's best time is already 0.489 seconds quicker than the best time from all eight days of testing last year, set by Sebastian Vettel.

More statistics back up Mercedes' dominant position. Hamilton completed the most laps of any driver (273), the team outdid its rivals by this measure too (first place with 494; Red Bull was second on 471), and Mercedes engines did more tours than any others (1189 vs 1094 for the three Ferrari-powered squads).

As Mercedes is keen to stress, it's still unclear where the team ultimately stands in comparison to its rivals, particularly with question marks over what Ferrari's true straightline speed performance might be, but the main takeaway is that Mercedes topped the times by a long way. Kimi Raikkonen's third-best time of the week (set on the C5s on Thursday) was a huge 1.359s slower.

Mercedes, unsurprisingly, compares well to its rivals on average over long runs, but expect more of this data to make the overall picture clearer next week.

Red Bull looks to be a clear second-best...

Jake Boxall-Legge, Autosport Technical Editor

At no point during week one did Red Bull show its true pace. In truth, nobody really did, but the brand new RB16 did tease the team's usual prowess around the slower corners when a higher-downforce spec is needed.

Having now enjoyed a full year with Honda, Red Bull has a bit more license to tighten up its cooling package and push the boundaries of its aerodynamics that much further. The front end, too, is all new - and the team looks better for it.

Crucially, Red Bull logged the second-highest number of laps across the first three days, putting a total of 1362 miles on the RB16's odometer. The early prognosis is that it's a fast and reliable prospect - just not quite to the same magnitude as the Mercedes W11. There's always a bigger fish, it seems.

Max Verstappen in particular looks like he'll retain his place as the outside bet for wins. There's no evidence that Red Bull will come close to toppling Mercedes any more than it did last season, but a year for the Red Bull/Honda partnership to ferment even further should yield a much finer car for the season.

Both Verstappen and Alex Albon reported that the new car, if nothing else, is a step in the right direction. It's not that the RB15 had any glaring weaknesses, but the key thing was for the team to find its less-strong areas and work on them. Albon has also had a proper test programme with the team after being drafted in midway through last year and, while he's not looked as comfortable as Verstappen, he should be able to reap the rewards of more running in the car.

The early signs point to Red Bull being the de facto second-best team this year - but that could all change by next week.

...But Ferrari is playing catch-up

Alex Kalinauckas

Right now, Ferrari looks to be struggling in comparison to Mercedes and Red Bull. Team principal Mattia Binotto even conceded "the others are faster than us at the moment".

The team is just eighth in the pecking order on lap times, with Sebastian Vettel's 1m18.154s on Pirelli's C4 tyre the 14th-best time overall (out of 21 drivers), and its long run pace doesn't seem to be all that great at this stage either. However, Ferrari is keen to point out that it is doing testing differently in 2020.

After leaving last year's tests as the perceived frontrunner (and the data did support that assessment), it was badly stung by Mercedes in Australia, and ultimately defeated over the course of the 2019 campaign. This time, Binotto stresses that Ferrari "changed the approach to the testing and the programme" and that it spent the first test "trying to map the car [in] various aero configurations, various mechanical configurations, without really trying to optimise the set-up and look for overall performance".

That suggests the team may well find overall speed and long-run pace that closes the gap to Mercedes. F1 wants a close season in 2020, and Ferrari needs to play its part in that if it can.

Intriguingly, some of the straightline speed data, plus a Mercedes press release, suggests Ferrari has been running down on power compared to its customers this week. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the team could turn the wick up next week and that changes the perceived pecking order once again...

The pack looks super-close behind Mercedes

Jonathan Noble, Motorsport.com F1 Editor @NobleF1

While few people left the Barcelona test believing anyone but Mercedes was in the driving seat, the picture behind the Silver Arrows was much harder to pick out.

Red Bull's optimism about its car and the progress that has been made, allied to Ferrari's concerns that it has slipped back (plus the suspicions its engine was well wound down), make it hard to be clear about who leads the chasing pack.

The picturer is clouded further by Racing Point, as its Mercedes-inspired car has certainly hit the ground running and appears to be currently slotted in nicely somewhere in the gulf between the best and the rest.

In fact, all the indications are that the midfield has closed up to the top-three teams - and that the midfield itself is more compact than it was even last year.

With Williams especially encouraged by its start, there doesn't appear to be an obvious tail-ender right now, which could make for a truly stressful time for those drivers and teams bang in the middle of that fight.

Racing Point makes progress with 'Pink Mercedes'

Luke Smith, Autosport F1 Reporter @LukeSmithF1

Before Mercedes' DAS system hit the headlines on Wednesday, the big talking point of testing was Racing Point's new RP20 car - and it's similarity to last year's Mercedes W10.

Racing Point made no secret of its decision to try and follow the design lead of last year's title-winning car, revealing it had decided last July to go for a blank sheet of paper and try to mirror the W10's characteristics.

It's an opportunity that has not previously been afforded to Racing Point in its previous guise, when it was forced to carry over parts and design concepts due to budget constraints. But that is now a thing of the past following Lawrence Stroll's takeover, and with Aston Martin works status around the corner in 2021. So why not roll the dice in the final year of the current regulations cycle and bid to replicate one of the most successful cars in F1 history?

The decision appeared to pay off quickly as Sergio Perez finished third fastest on the opening day and second on day two. On the cumulative timesheets at the end of testing, the Racing Points wound up fifth and sixth, Lance Stroll nosing nine thousandths of a second clear of Perez.

The similarities were immediately noted to the Haas/Ferrari and AlphaTauri/Red Bull relationships, but Racing Point technical chief Andrew Green made clear this was a 'Haas Mk2' model: there's serious inspiration, yes, and a few shared parts as in the past, but nothing beyond that.

Following years of turbulence that forced the Silverstone-based team to play it safe as it focused on little more than survival, to see it come out of the box at testing with such a bold strategy is really exciting. Let's see if it pays off.

It's been a bumpy start for Haas

Valentin Khorounzhiy, Motorsport.com News Editor @vkhorounzhiy

The Ferrari-Haas relationship was a major talking point of the 2019 pre-season - and while that discussion has taken a back seat to a certain other 'copycat' design this time, it was difficult not to pick up on the parallels between the two outfits' initial 2020 showing.

Like Ferrari, Haas headed to Barcelona speaking of a different approach. Like Ferrari, it suffered high-profile interruptions to its programme - with Romain Grosjean's crash on cold tyres on day two, followed by Kevin Magnussen's wheel spacer failure and resulting shunt on day three. And like Ferrari, Haas is yet to show anything resembling representative pace and is towards the bottom of the combined timesheets. There haven't been any particularly eye-catching long runs either.

But Haas's current ambitions are less lofty than Ferrari's, and it'll be afforded more time in righting the ship, which is likely why the noises coming out of the team have been largely positive. Before chasing any performance with the VF-20, Haas is looking to ensure correlation between the factory and the track and nail the fundamentals. And it sounds like those are on their way.

Team boss Gunther Steiner is "cautiously optimistic" that the issues of 2019 are a relic of the past, and believes the team's new car is "more predictable".

Though Magnussen's shunt meant Haas ended up bottom of the mileage rankings, 316 laps is nothing to scoff at and Steiner felt the team could live with the premature end to its programme because of its "very good" first two days.

As for the lack of headline lap times, Steiner was not concerned. "We decided to do what we wanted to do, and not to look at other [cars], because there's no points up for grabs in testing," he said. "We went through our test programmes and are pretty happy what we've achieved."

Williams is all the better for its disastrous 2019

Alex Kalinauckas

After the first test in 2019, Williams had hit rock bottom. The team missed the first two full days of running as its FW42 arrived late, and the realisation that a tough year was ahead was setting in.

Fast forward one year and there is clearly a real feeling of optimism - as well as a sense that the tough times last year bonded the squad closely - in the team. George Russell said Williams feels "much closer than we were last year" to its rivals, and the team's best time, a C3-shod 1m18.168s from Russell on day one, is above Romain Grosjean's day three 1m18.380s on the same tyres.

There's clearly still work to be done - and the team lost running on Friday after Nicolas Latifi suffered a power unit issue, so reliability must be a consideration - but Williams can be encouraged by its form so far at Barcelona.

It's certainly true that the actual pecking order is yet to be revealed, but Williams should be pleased with its work so far with the FW43.

The new cars are seriously fast - potentially the fastest ever

Luke Smith

For all of the excitement about the new cars set to arrive in 2021, the fact this year's cars are set to be the fastest in F1 history should not be ignored. We got a taste of things to come this season, even though we're only three days into the first week of testing.

As most teams enjoyed bulletproof reliability - just one red flag in the opening two days - they were able to quickly shift focus to performance runs, stretching the legs of their new models.

Valtteri Bottas ended the opening test with the fastest time, recording a lap of 1m15.732s on the C5 tyre on Friday morning. It was half a second quicker than the fastest time set in pre-season last year, and just three-tenths shy of the track record at Barcelona (Bottas's own Spanish Grand Prix pole time from last year, a 1m15.406s).

While we're yet to see just how much faster than last year each team can go, the signs are this is going to be the fastest year in F1 history, aided of course by the stable regulations from last year to this.

Esteban Ocon was quick to sing the praises of the 2020 breed of cars as he prepares for his racing return in 2020 with Renault.

"The amount of grip I feel now, I think I've never felt it before," he said. "I never went that fast in some corners before, so it feels good. It's definitely exciting, because that's just going to go faster and faster.

"We're going to probably break all the records of lap times I reckon this year."

Last year, 14 of the 21 track lap records fell. Could Ocon's prediction come true, and new records be set everywhere?