Ferrari the closest it's been since testing

Ferrari and Mercedes looked neck and neck in testing at Barcelona back in February, and after a difficult start to the season Ferrari must feel the Spanish Grand Prix represents its best chance yet to beat Mercedes in 2016.

Kimi Raikkonen and Nico Rosberg completed qualifying simulations on the soft tyre back in February that were almost impossible to separate. The new Ferrari looked fast, looked set to maybe challenge Mercedes finally, properly, for the world championship.

That challenge hasn't really materialised so far. Mercedes has always held a significant edge at the key moments. When Ferrari had a chance to win by making faster starts in Australia it failed to grasp it; the rest of the time Mercedes has been categorically in charge.

At the Catalunya circuit the gap is closer than it's been since Ferrari unexpectedly topped the Friday timesheet at Shanghai.

Mercedes is still ahead - on pure pace at least - but Ferrari is not far behind at all.

Kimi Raikkonen was actually fractionally faster than championship leader Nico Rosberg in sector one of his best lap, but gave away two tenths in sector two, and just under a tenth in the slow-speed turns of sector three.

Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel were both below par on the soft tyre. Vettel suffered some wild oversteer exiting the quick chicane at Turns 7 and 8, which undoubtedly ruined his rear tyres for the remainder of the lap and a subsequent attempt after a cool-down lap on the same set.

Hamilton dropped roughly a tenth to Rosberg in each of the first two sectors, before losing half a second over the final part of the lap when he encountered Marcus Ericsson's Sauber in the early stages of a long run.

PURE PACE RANKING
1. Mercedes (Rosberg) 1m23.922s (Soft)
2. Ferrari (Raikkonen) 1m24.176s (Soft)
3. Toro Rosso (Sainz) 1m25.131s (Soft)
4. Red Bull (Ricciardo) 1m25.194s (Soft)
5. McLaren (Alonso) 1m25.342s (Soft)
6. Force India (Perez) 1m25.437s (Soft)
7. Williams (Bottas) 1m25.708s (Soft)
8. Haas (Grosjean) 1m25.899s (Soft)
9. Renault (Magnussen) 1m26.244s (Soft)
10. Manor (Wehrlein) 1m26.960s (Soft)
11. Sauber (Nasr) 1m27.812s (Medium)

The surprises here are the relative strength of Toro Rosso (in Carlos Sainz Jr's hands), McLaren and Force India, while Williams - clearly third best team at this track last season - is struggling a bit.

We know Williams usually runs a bit heavy on Fridays, and will not be using maximum power from the Mercedes engine yet, so there is certainly more to come, but Felipe Massa made a mistake on his quick lap and ended up only 16th fastest, while team-mate Valtteri Bottas (11th overall) wasn't satisfied with his car's behaviour.

"The car felt OK, but not perfect," said Bottas, who felt the team went the wrong way with its suspension set-up for the short runs.

"We went back with it for the long run and it was better.

"There was some traffic also in my quickest lap with the soft, so today is not easy to draw very big conclusions, but I reckon we'll definitely be better."

Sainz's pace on the soft tyre raised some eyebrows over at big brother team Red Bull, but Daniel Ricciardo nevertheless expects the RB12 to be decisively the third best car behind Mercedes and Ferrari when it comes to qualifying.

"Coming into the weekend we sort of expected top five - to be the next best behind Mercedes and Ferrari," he said.

"Today it looks a bit closer, but if we do everything that we can tomorrow, and Sunday, that's probably realistic for us."

Ricciardo's new team-mate Max Verstappen should be fairly pleased with his first day's work in the RB12. Ultimately he ended the day 0.181s slower than Ricciardo - which is not a big gap - but he was actually quicker in the first and second sectors, before dropping nearly two and a half tenths over the final part of his best lap.

He had another go on the same set of tyres, but they were never going to stand for that. Nevertheless, so far so good for the young Dutchman, who awarded himself a seven out of 10 for his first day's work with his new team.

"For the first day I can't complain," he said. "I'm still learning a lot about the car. It's getting better and better all the time. We did a lot of work, a lot of laps, and that is the most important thing for me at the moment."

For the man he replaced at Red Bull - Daniil Kvyat - it was a better day than it looked on the surface. He messed up his short run on the soft tyres, but his longer runs were much more competitive relative to team-mate Sainz.

"I didn't warm up my tyres in the second session," he said. "It was the wrong call from me - I tried a different strategy and it didn't pay off.

"The general feeling with the car is growing each lap - Toro Rosso has a very competitive package.

"One car warmed up the tyres, one car didn't warm up the tyres, and the car that warmed up the tyres looked competitive."

McLaren again looks quite fast over a single lap, and we can probably expect Barcelona to suit the MP4-31 better than some of the other circuits F1 has visited over the early part of this season.

But the Honda engine tends to run much closer to its power limit on Fridays relative to Mercedes and Ferrari-powered teams, so outqualifying Force India and Williams will probably be just beyond reach.

That's why Jenson Button is not optimistic of scoring points on Sunday, without a bit of help from rivals.

One of those rivals will surely be Force India. Sergio Perez feels the aerodynamic upgrade to the VJM09 has substantially improved rear grip on a circuit that doesn't tend to suit the team.

Both cars managing to lap within a tenth of the second Red Bull represents a pretty strong start to Force India's weekend.

During winter testing here it seemed that four distinct groups were forming within the competitive pecking order.

They remain in place, broadly speaking, with Mercedes and Ferrari clearly ahead of the rest (and Mercedes probably still a step ahead of Ferrari), Red Bull, Williams, Toro Rosso and Force India now joined by McLaren in the next gaggle, Haas and Renault next, then Manor battling with beleaguered Sauber in a private battle at the back.

Sauber has yet to use the softest available tyre compound for a low-fuel flying lap this weekend, so we don't yet know how much closer it would be to Manor in a straight fight here.

LONG RUN RANKING (SOFT)
1. Ferrari (Vettel) 1m29.347s (8-lap average)
2. Mercedes (Rosberg) 1m29.536s (8-lap average)
3. Force India (Hulkenberg) 1m29.906s (7-lap average)
4. Red Bull (Ricciardo) 1m30.029s (10-lap average)
5. Toro Rosso (Sainz) 1m30.076s (10-lap average)
6. McLaren (Button) 1m30.309s (9-lap average)
7. Williams (Bottas) 1m30.557s (8-lap average)
8. Manor (Wehrlein) 1m30.919s (5-lap average)
9. Haas (Grosjean) 1m31.476s (8-lap average)
10. Renault (Magnussen) 1m31.857s (12-lap average)
*Sauber did not run the soft tyre in FP2

Ferrari looks even closer to Mercedes over the longer runs, possibly even slightly ahead in actual fact.

These runs are difficult to read, though, because traffic is a big problem on this circuit, which is quite short and lacks easy overtaking spots.

Raikkonen also suffered a fuel system problem midway through FP2, while Hamilton did very few meaningful high-fuel laps on either tyre as he struggled to find a set-up to his liking.

Rosberg and Vettel at least completed comparable runs on the soft compound, at similar times, and (we can presume) similar fuel loads.

If you take the first eight laps of Vettel's run and match them against the eight most meaningful laps of Rosberg's (he backed off several times, creating some anomalies within the full extent of his run), Vettel was actually just under two tenths per lap faster on average than the championship leader.

"It was a bit tricky getting the car in the right window," reckoned Vettel. "Usually we are quite good on Friday night to do a good step for Saturday, so I'm looking forward to that.

"I think we have a couple of things coming this weekend that should make it a bit more of a challenge for them."

Formula 1 can but hope.

Toro Rosso looks very competitive on the soft tyre compared to Red Bull, so perhaps it will will be in the mix in the best-of-the-rest fight in the race.

Sainz qualified very strongly here last year and this circuit is probably the best on the calendar so far for the STR11.

Force India, McLaren and Manor all look strong on the soft tyre too, but it should be noted those runs were completed towards the very end of the session, when the track was at its most rubbered-in and those cars' fuel loads were lower than the others in the list, which completed their soft runs earlier.

LONG RUN RANKING (MEDIUM)
1. Mercedes (Rosberg) 1m28.833s (2-lap average)
2. Red Bull (Ricciardo) 1m29. 876s (8-lap average)
3. Ferrari (Raikkonen) 1m30.198s (12-lap average)
4. Williams (Massa) 1m30.473s (11-lap average)
5. Toro Rosso (Kvyat) 1m31.061s (14-lap average)
6. McLaren (Alonso) 1m31.095s (10-lap average)
7. Sauber (Ericsson) 1m31.265s (14-lap average)
8. Force India (Hulkenberg) 1m31.275s (11-lap average)
9. Manor (Haryanto) 1m32.375s (9-lap average)
*Haas and Renault did not use the medium tyre for long runs in FP2

LONG RUN RANKING (HARD)
1. Toro Rosso (Sainz) 1m30.140s (13-lap average)
2. Renault (Magnussen) 1m30.788s (12-lap average)
3. Haas (Grosjean) 1m31.572s (5-lap average)
4. Sauber (Nasr) 1m32.105s (9-lap average)
*No other teams ran the hard tyre in FP2

From a very, very small data set (due to Rosberg repeatedly backing off on laps) the Mercedes looks a touch faster than Ferrari on the medium tyre, which has traditionally been a very comfortable compound for the world champion squad.

Red Bull also looks good on this rubber, with both drivers marginally quicker than Ferrari and very close to Mercedes, but on the soft they fall back - evenly matched with sister squad Toro Rosso and about half a second away from the frontrunners.

The Williams looks more comfortable on the medium compound, while Sainz's Toro Rosso was strong on the hard tyre, and the Renault more comfortable on this rubber than the soft.

Again there are caveats of timing here. Sauber completed its medium tyre running much later than Force India, which was very early to use that compound; Mercedes did very few laps on the medium - and right at the end of the session, so that large gap is certainly exaggerated.

Conversely the runs from Ferrari, Williams, McLaren and Toro Rosso probably aren't too far away from representative, as they were completed at similar times, though Raikkonen spent a long time in the pits with his problem, so was probably running a bit heavier than the others when he did finally emerge.

Sainz's run on the hard compound was actually quite impressive, suggesting perhaps that tyre could have some use on Sunday, particularly if the temperatures rise.

We all hope the temperature can begin to rise in the title battle too. Ferrari looks quick here, perhaps genuinely the closest to Mercedes it's been so far this season.

F1 waits to see if it can finally convert the promise it believes it holds into real results.