What testing tells us about the early 2020 F1 formbook

Formula 1's 2020 pre-season testing is over. The laps are logged, the quotes are in and the trucks are being packed up to depart Barcelona. Now we know how the field will line up on the grid for the first race in Melbourne.

That's the theory, anyway, but the reality is an awful lot more complicated.

Thanks to the understandable chaos being created by the coronavirus around the world, it's not even 100% certain that the opening round of the season will take place in Melbourne. But, flippant statements about a serious situation aside, it's important to stress again that any analysis of F1 testing is an educated guess using the timing data collected on site around other media engagements, information gleaned from contacts, and just watching the cars out on circuit from various trackside vantage points.

Ultimately, the picture is incomplete thanks to the closely guarded secrets that only the individual teams will know regarding the state their cars were in each time they sent them out on track throughout the six days of running at Barcelona.

But let's start with the headline time and the team that set it: Mercedes.

It seems that the team that has dominated F1 since the start of the V6 turbo hybrid era will again head into the new campaign as the firm favourite. Valtteri Bottas's 1m15.732s on C5 tyres from the first test went unbeaten in week two, although he did also collect the quickest time in the second test with his 1m16.196s, again on C5s, on Friday afternoon.

It appears as if Mercedes has again packed on downforce, which can been seen by its performance throughout the Barcelona lap on Friday.

Bottas gave away a massive 0.394 seconds in his best sector one time to Racing Point's Sergio Perez, who topped the segment for the day on 21.605s. In sector two, Bottas closed to 0.049s from Charles Leclerc's leading 28.191s, but in the final sector Bottas was on top with a 25.942s, with team-mate Lewis Hamilton (who drove the W11 in the morning) second, 0.06s adrift. Esteban Ocon got closest on 26.129s, but Red Bull and Ferrari were 0.285s and 0.371s slower respectively with Max Verstappen and Leclerc.

This is important because Barcelona's third sector contains the Turn 10 hairpin and has several slow-speed turns, which is where Mercedes shone compared to its rivals in 2019. It has clearly not lost this advantage, and its 2020 challenger can keep its tyres alive.

Both Verstappen and Red Bull team-mate Albon had several spins in testing. But if the car has an inherent balance issue it wouldn't generally look so strong when watching trackside

Where Mercedes is under pressure is in the reliability stakes. The team had to swap engines twice over the course of the two tests - with a failure for Bottas curtailing his running on the second afternoon of test one, and Hamilton's oil pressure anomaly ending his day in the equivalent session in the second test. This, allied with power unit problems also blighting customer squad Williams's testing to a degree, is an issue, and Mercedes knows it.

"We clearly still have some more work to do on the reliability to get us up to the standard that we expect by the start of the season," says Mercedes technical director James Allison.

The picture behind Mercedes is incredibly complicated, but there are indications that Red Bull will head into the season second to the reigning champion squad in the pecking order.

The team did not appear to do much long running throughout testing, and Verstappen ended up second in the overall teams' times chart - with a 1m16.269s. But he did that on the slightly harder C4 rubber, which suggests Red Bull has more potential it is trying to keep under wraps.

Watching trackside, the Red Bull looks nailed on through all the various corner types at the Barcelona track, while the Ferrari looked like it had a consistent problem with understeer that was giving Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel cause for concern behind the wheel of the SF1000.

Although the performance of the Honda power unit remains a question mark given its historical record, it can be fairly assumed that Red Bull will start the season as the closest challenger to Mercedes.

A final reason to land at this conclusion comes from Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto, who still maintains his squad is "certainly not the fastest car at least here in Barcelona during the testing" and "it seems that our main competitors are certainly faster". If Binotto is going to make such statements, then we must take him at his word.

Verstappen and Christian Horner certainly did not appear under pressure during a joint press conference appearance on Friday, with team principal Horner saying: "It's been a pretty positive pre-season for us. We did plenty of mileage last week. This week we've been focusing on some development bits and pieces. But generally, it's been a very positive experience."

Both Verstappen and team-mate Alex Albon have had several spins throughout testing. But if the RB16 has an inherent balance issue it wouldn't generally look so strong when watching trackside. Add to this the wet start that preceded Verstappen's offs on Thursday and the high winds at Barcelona this week.

And so, we come to Ferrari. It's clear the pecking has not changed dramatically compared to 2019 - and while Horner says the gap to the midfield has "concertinaed" towards the top three given the stable regulations, it seems clear that the big three teams remain a trio in their own class.

As explained above, we are placing Ferrari third of the leading trio because of Binotto's assertions, but the team also ended up with the fourth-fastest overall time of testing - Leclerc's 1m16.360s set on C5s on the final day.

Using the data Autosport has gathered, taking a look at Ferrari's race simulation running in the last two days gives an indication of how the team looks in the longer-effort stakes.

The McLaren looks that bit more stable and better overall compared to the Haas when watching their respective behaviour trackside

On Friday afternoon, Leclerc did a 60-lap run, excluding in/out laps, all on the C2 tyres - which Ferrari would not be able to do in an actual race per the change of compound rules. His average pace went from 1m22.970s in stint one to 1m21.914s in stint two, and then he lapped at an average of 1m20.595s in the final stint. This indicates he had a heavy fuel load onboard and burned it off, as it can be estimated that a car fat with fuel would lap this track in the 1m22s-1m25s bracket.

Ferrari also tried a race sim on Thursday, which was cut short when Hamilton's engine issue caused a red flag. Vettel went from an average of 1m24.090s over 20 laps on C2s, to 1m22.971s over 16 laps, also on the C2s. He later returned to long running, again on C2s, for 24 laps. With two slow outliers for overtaking traffic removed, his average was 1m22.335s during this stint.

Hamilton looked as if he was also set to do a full race sim at the same time - his times were at a similar level to Vettel's in the 1m22s/1m23s bracket, indicating higher fuel - but the stoppage cut that short. Mercedes and Red Bull seemed to largely concentrate on shorter consistent runs on the C2 and C3 rubber throughout testing, which is understandable given the rules stability and also the tyres remaining the same from 2019.

Behind Ferrari come the rest, led, it seems, by Racing Point. The team leaves testing with the fifth-fastest time overall - Perez's 1m16.634s - but there is a sense it was holding back somewhat on outright speed.

First of all, there's Perez holding the best sector one time on Friday, but at several points during the day he also looked set to improve his best lap before losing time - apparently mistake-free - in the final sector.

As for the long-run data, Racing Point also did a race run on Friday. Perez was straight out of the pits in the afternoon session and over 13 laps on the C3s in his first stint he averaged 1m24.126s, then ran at 1m23.196s over 22 laps on the C2s, before ending with 23 laps still on C2s at an average of 1m21.706s.

In what is a massively congested midfield, it looks as if McLaren heads Haas behind Racing Point.

Although we logged Haas as producing a better long-run effort on Friday morning, it was over a shorter distance at 43 laps compared to some of the other race sims we followed. Romain Grosjean completed 20 laps on the C3 tyres at 1m23.638s, then lapped at 1m21.629s over 14 laps (with one outlier removed) on C2s, before going back onto C3s for eight laps averaging 1m22.296s just before the lunch break.

Looking at what was a heavily disrupted race sim for McLaren on Thursday, Lando Norris did 16 laps at 1m24.332s on the C3s and then 16 laps on the C2s at an average of 1m23.697s. But he did have to contend with running behind Alfa Romeo's Antonio Giovinazzi for much of his effort, saying later that the Italian "deeply affected me undercutting" and "it still is annoying in testing that anyone can use DRS when they want. So you get close when you have the chance for overtaking and the car ahead uses DRS to stay ahead of you - it screws you over quite badly".

But the McLaren looks that bit more stable and better overall compared to the Haas, which had a pair of crashes in the first test, when watching their respective behaviour trackside. It has also been suggested to Autosport that McLaren has made another step forward in 2020, and Norris says the MCL35 is "less on edge" compared to its predecessor. Haas also ended up with the slowest time in the combined teams' classification - Grosjean's 1m17.037s.

Renault is very hard to place in our educated-guess order, but it appears as if it is behind three of its midfield rivals. This is despite Daniel Ricciardo setting the third-fastest lap of testing overall in the teams' classification with his 1m16.276s on C5s on the final day, and is mainly down to what we can glean from our long run assessments.

"I doubt we're in a better position. Realistically, I think we are still the slowest car" Williams's George Russell

During a race run on Wednesday, Ocon started on C2s, with an average over 18 laps at 1m24.538s. He then went onto the C3s, with an average over 18 laps of 1m23.112s (with two outliers removed), before ending with 15 laps on C2s lapping at 1m22.046s. But things did look better for Renault on the last day of the first test, when Ricciardo started with 18 laps on C2s lapping at an average of 1m23.929s. He then completed 17 laps on the C3s at 1m22.783s (with one outlier removed), and ended with 22 laps on C2s at an average of 1m21.450s (with one outlier removed). Ricciardo then stopped on track at the end of that final stint and caused a red flag.

It could be that Renault has more long-run pace than it is letting on - and again the spectre of fruitlessness from testing time calculations is evident here - but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume Ricciardo's headline times were Renault showing its full hand while at least some of its rivals held back.

AlphaTauri and Alfa Romeo are also in the mix in the midfield, it appears in that order behind Renault, judging by our long-run data.

AlphaTauri had Gasly do a race run on Thursday afternoon, which was also disrupted by Hamilton's stoppage. He completed all his stints on the C2 tyres - starting with 21 laps at an average of 1m24.568s, then 20 laps at an average of 1m23.909s, and he ended with 17 tours at 1m22.584s before the red flag cut his run short.

Looking at Alfa Romeo's concurrent disrupted and shortened long stint for Giovinazzi, running with Norris, on Thursday afternoon, he started with 18 laps on C2s at a 1m25.216s average, and then did 23 laps on C2s at an average of 1m24.198s.

We clocked Williams completing lots of different run arrangements - mainly to assess the improvements it has clearly made to the FW43 over the winter - across the six days of testing. But we'll leave it to George Russell on where Williams stands in the presumed pecking order.

"No doubt we're in a better position," he says. "[But] I think realistically, we are still the slowest car. I'm not going to get carried [away with] ourselves, but we've definitely reduced the gap. So that's all we could have hoped for over the winter."

F1 now heads into the 'real' 2020 season. It could be that all the indications from testing are as they seem to us, but it's equally just as possible such an assessment is immediately turned around and upside down when everything is pushed to the maximum in the first qualifying session.

Mercedes seems to be ahead again, but it's not bulletproof. Its rivals will be looking forward to hitting the track in anger and seeing where they ultimately stand, with nowhere to hide against the clock.