10 things we've learned from the first F1 test

The first test of the Formula 1 season used to be dismissed as little more than a glorified shakedown, but as the schedule has condensed to just eight days in recent years, teams have no choice but to aggressively pursue their programmes from the moment the systems checks are complete.

That means the picture surrounding each team emerges quicker than it used to. You don't necessarily know how every car on the grid compares to its nine rivals, but there are a decent number of signals coming out of each set of garages that start to paint the picture of who's in for a good year, and who's already under pressure with the Australian Grand Prix looming on the horizon.

Next week's second test will answer many of the questions that the first four days posed, but here are the key pointers our team on the ground at Barcelona was able to take away from the start of the testing war.

The rule changes might have hurt Mercedes
Gary Anderson

Mercedes continued to dominate Formula 1 after the major 2017 rule changes, but it's possible that the milder aerodynamic tweaks for this year have tripped it up.

It has not followed the pack by going to a high-rake set-up (high rear ride height) in recent years, and has carried that same philosophy over to this year's car. This means it's the car with the lowest rake.

It's also following the more conventional approach to the front wing, rather than it dropping away in front of the tyres, to generate the necessary front downforce. Those with higher rake can do this thanks to the increased ground effect by getting the front wing lower to the ground, especially in the slower corners, meaning they can afford to give up some of that front wing area in front of the tyre.

This reduces the downforce loss when steering lock is applied. It could be that Mercedes, which looks to be a few tenths behind Ferrari, is struggling with this compared to some of its rivals because it doesn't have the 'rake' advantage and therefore is losing a bit more front downforce in the corners.

A rethink might be in order, but this is the team that has won five consecutive world championships so it would be a big call to write it off.

New-look Ferrari is strong on and off track
Scott Mitchell

Two days atop the times, a beaming four-time world champion and a happy new signing. It's fair to say Ferrari's new era under Mattia Binotto has started very promisingly indeed.

Adjusting the times to account for which tyres everybody was using, and taking into consideration the fuel loads, suggests Ferrari looks very strong. Both Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc waxed lyrical about the ease with which they got to grips with the SF90.

Things looked rosy at Ferrari all week, from the "unbelievable" opening day that left Vettel grinning, to the impressive long-run pace from the German and his new team-mate at the end of the week, to the new-found openness and proactivity of its communications team. This is an almost unrecognisable team from 2018, when Ferrari seemed dogged by a dark cloud from mid-season onwards.

Even if we don't consider fuel loads, simply using Pirelli's estimated tyre deltas between compounds puts Leclerc and Vettel in a league of their own on-track. They are the only drivers on an effective 1m16s lap time, several tenths clear of their nearest rivals.

Off-track, Ferrari's attitude has shifted significantly. Vettel declared: "If we can maintain the level of joy and fun I found on the track here and saw on people's faces the last couple of months, then I'm positive and hopeful for the future."

Raikkonen is at home at Alfa... and quick
Edd Straw

The Alfa Romeo caught the eye when it was first seen with its interesting front wing, part of an aggressive design from the rebranded Sauber team. It looked quick standing still, and went pretty well on track too.

Inevitably, Sauber returnee Kimi Raikkonen was the focus of attention. Eighteen years after leaving the team following his remarkable rookie season, he returned and instantly looked at home both on and off track.

On Tuesday, while Antonio Giovinazzi was in the car, Raikkonen was with the team looking content and relaxed and offering what help he could. He had the air of someone relishing the new challenge rather than worried about the fact that he was no longer in a Ferrari.

The Alfa Romeo should at least allow him to fight for consistent points finishes and showed a decent turn of pace with Raikkonen coming close to topping day three - for what that would have been worth.

Although there were hints from watching the car trackside that it might not have quite the grip of some of its rivals, it's a good foundation to build from. So at 39, there's life in Raikkonen yet.

Front wings are barged aside
Jake Boxall-Legge

Front wings were always the most important parts of the car to develop. Get it right and the engineers were setting everything up further downstream nicely for the rest of the car to take advantage.

But it's now tightly restricted. Outwash, the prevalent factor in keeping tyre wake away from the floor, is no longer at the peak of its powers, giving much more for the bargeboards to do.

Compared to designs seen in the previous decade, 'bargeboards' has become a bit of a misnomer, simply because they're now increasingly intricate pieces of kit. Picking up the airflow from the front wing is one thing, but now they have much more tyre wake to manage. Ultimately, that has to be steered clear from the floor opening, or there is a risk of losing a colossal chunk of downforce from the underbody.

Racing Point technical chief Andy Green has attributed a third of the performance in the 2019 cars to the bargeboard section, up from about a quarter last year. This means that, as such an influencing factor, there are huge gains to find.

Current bargeboards are already littered with an array of slots, turning vanes and flow conditioners, so expect them to become much more complex as the season goes on. Large-scale changes could even come in time for the second test, so don't be surprised if there are a number of very different designs next week!

Williams is up against it
Jonathan Noble

The first pre-season test rarely gives a proper indication of who's best, but it very often makes obvious the team that's in the most trouble.

This year the wooden spoon has so far been given to Williams, which faced a pretty intense week as delays in its build schedule meant it failed to get its car out on track until the afternoon of the third day.

Williams is not the first team in history to miss testing time (and it almost certainly won't be the last), but its situation is especially difficult because its car doesn't appear to be all that quick, and everyone else looks like they have stepped up their game.

Coming off the back of its disappointing 2018 campaign, Williams knows it needed a good improvement with its car. There was little sign of that judging by the times we saw from Robert Kubica and George Russell.

But in reality its times were unrepresentative as its aero programme was about understanding the car rather than beating the stopwatch.

We will know much more next week when Williams brings more parts to its car. It should then be running in a configuration much closer to its definitive 2019 challenger.

If this time next week it has not delivered pace that puts it in the mix, then alarm bells will be ringing for Australia.

Only good news for Red Bull-Honda
Scott Mitchell

More laps than it has ever managed in pre-season for Honda and "only good news" at Red Bull. Suffice to say that F1's much-anticipated new partnership has started 2019 brightly.

Unsurprisingly, given this is testing, this is obscured if you just look at the lap times. Red Bull did not even trouble the top 10 on pace over the whole test, but it was not pursuing performance. That comes next week. The first objective was reliability, and that now has a big fat tick next to it.

There are also further hints at the progress Honda has made. At the start of the week Red Bull team boss Christian Horner referred to the installation of the engine as a "thing of beauty", and Honda F1 technical director Toyoharu Tanabe said the packaging had not come at the cost of performance.

Speaking of which: 2018 Toro Rosso driver turned new Red Bull recruit Pierre Gasly reckons you can "feel the performance has increased". Now we need to see just how much, and if it's enough to make Red Bull and Honda genuine victory contenders.

McLaren still has work to do
Edd Straw

McLaren kept a relatively low profile during the first test, which is very much in keeping with its more humble approach to the season. That also means it didn't have the eye-catching reliability problems that were such a big story in the equivalent test last year.

But despite the MCL34 setting the second-fastest time on the first two days of the test, based on analysis of the lap times and what we can see on track it seems McLaren is still closer to the back than the front.

As the test progressed there were hints of the rear-end instability that McLaren struggled with in 2018, albeit nowhere near as pronounced as what we saw last year, and there was nothing in the lap times to suggest we should expect great things this season. So there's still progress to be made to live up to more than the most modest expectations.

But this was to be expected. McLaren has made big technical changes to the team and needed to reset things this year. It's a long road back, and the fact that it seemed a relatively calm, if subdued, first test can be taken as a positive.

The 2019 cars will be faster than ever
Jonathan Noble

Talk at the end of last year was that the new aero rules for 2019 were going to make Formula 1 cars up to two seconds per lap slower.

So there were some raised eyebrows at Barcelona this week when drivers started popping in lap times right away that were not a world away from 2018.

By the end of the week, Nico Hulkenberg's table-topping time of 1m17.393s was close to the winter testing record from last year - which was Vettel's 1m17.182s from the final test when teams started to wind things up a bit.

The difference looks especially dramatic if you compare first test to first test. By the end of week one at Barcelona 12 months ago, Lewis Hamilton had only got down to a 1m19.333s.

Better weather and a faster track surface played a part in the improvement, but all the indications are that F1 won't be slower in 2019 - it will actually be quicker.

Renault technical chief Nick Chester said: "The cars by the end of testing are going to be a chunk quicker than they were this time last year, and I think they're going to be probably a bit quicker than the end of '18 already. So by the end of '19 they are going to be quite quick!"

Gremlins eat away at Haas promise
Jack Benyon

High hopes at Haas were replaced by tension as the VF-19 ground to a halt on track during the first morning of action.

The issue was caused by an electrical fault that affected fuel pressure, and while Tuesday went as planned, the car then stopped three times on Wednesday with more electronic issues that threatened to damage the Ferrari power unit.

"It's annoying more than frustrating - the car has good potential, the drivers like it, we just need to sort out these little gremlins," said Haas boss Gunther Steiner.

"I'm not liking it, to be honest, I could do without it, but still it's nothing to be desperate about. We will fix it."

Romain Grosjean mirrored Steiner's optimism, saying: "The main thing here is the car is really good, a good step has been made from Monday. I was already happy on Monday, but I'm more happy now."

The optimism from Steiner and Grosjean will need to be justified, especially as the team completed the second-least number of miles of the nine squads that made it out for the full test. Its best time was from Kevin Magnussen, which put him 13th out of 21 drivers. So there's plenty of work to be done.

F1 cars are better than ever straight out of the box
Gary Anderson

It was unusual to watch trackside on the first day of testing, as I always have done for the past few years, and see not one car that seemed to have any vices. They all looked well-balanced, predictable and any problems were controllable and not costing much.

We know teams are getting better than ever at testing their cars and simulating them on track in the factory, which partly explains things. But also the more simple front wings have played a part in this by reducing the downforce loss when steering lock is applied behind the new front wings.

Perhaps this could mean the field is closer over this season than we've seen in the past. While the top teams will still be at the front, there's less to gain from the front wing than there has been thanks to the reduction to five elements and the elimination of all the furniture that sat in front of the wing.

But it's a shame to see drivers having it relatively easy straight out of the box, as it almost makes things too easy. There are no cars out there that look like they could unlock a step in performance by fixing a significant problem, so it's all going to be about small tweaks and adding downforce from here.