What we learned from the first day of F1 2022 pre-season testing

Seldom do the Formula 1 rules change quite so extensively as they have done for 2022. And the appetite for the first day of running at the Barcelona circuit on Wednesday reflected this magnitude. Not because any definitive pecking order would be established, or we’d realise if the new cars can follow one another more closely to inspire greater racing. It was instead to see how the design offices of the 10 teams had chosen to skin their respective cats.

Lewis Hamilton assumed the role of plain-clothes detective as he scouted the handiwork of Mercedes’ rivals in the pitlane in the morning. The usually laidback Daniel Ricciardo was the “most excited” he’d been for testing in a long while. There was a rush among the media to see who could publish analysis of the lesser-spotted Red Bull RB18 the fastest.

PLUS: The secrets revealed in Red Bull's belated RB18 unveiling 

The irony of the heightened anticipation is that the eight-hour shakedown on day one was the least accessible to the public of any pre-season runout since at least 2019, when F1 switched to its extensive live coverage package. This year there’s no TV broadcast, no track attendance for the hardcore or even a live timing feed. It’s a behind-closed-doors affair.

That was the outcome of a fear among teams of mass unreliability, with just 93 laps having been completed on the opening day of testing in 2014 when the similarly seismic 1.6-litre turbo hybrid adjustment rolled into town. But there needn’t have been such worry eight years on as 16 drivers combined to post 1104 laps of the 2.89-mile clockwise circuit, and the red flags sat unused for the duration.

The field - minus Esteban Ocon, Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly, Sergio Perez and rookie Guanyu Zhou, who deferred to Alfa Romeo reserve driver Robert Kubica - were aided by the warm, dry, and crystal-clear conditions afforded to them across both four-hour morning and afternoon sessions.

Norris topped the lapcharts for McLaren, almost four seconds faster than Stroll in the Aston Martin - but nobody is expecting that gulf to be representative

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Overall fastest times on day one

On paper, it was Lando Norris who put the smooth circumstances to best use as he ended the day fastest. He guided the new McLaren MCL36, shod in sticky red-sidewall C4 Pirellis, to a 1m19.568s yardstick on the 90th of his 101 laps. That popped him six tenths ahead of Charles Leclerc’s morning benchmark on C3s, while Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr notched the third-quickest tour also on the yellow-walled rubber. Meanwhile, defending champion Max Verstappen set the pace of the slower white C2 chargers as he snared a 1m22.246s, enough for ninth overall.

"The weight makes a massive difference for just the driving, how the car reacts. It just feels a bit slower, a bit more sluggish" Lando Norris

In line with the increased safety structures and a shift to 18-inch wheels for this season, car weight has jumped from 752kg to 795kg. However, that and a bit of customary sandbagging is unlikely to account for the entirety of the 2.8s gap to Lewis Hamilton’s pole lap at the circuit from last season.

Norris recognised the comparative lethargy, saying: “The weight makes a massive difference for just the driving, how the car reacts. It just feels a bit slower, a bit more sluggish. It's like running with the race fuel of last season before almost a qualifying lap in a way. You do feel it in like the braking and certain areas. The performance is not quite the same.

“But it shouldn't be too long [to adjust] and I think by the end of the day, you're a little bit more used to it and it feels almost normal again.”

Norris describes the 2022 cars as "a bit more sluggish" due to the additional weight

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

The times, regardless of where they sit in recent history, come with the mandatory testing caveat that we don’t know how true to life the cars seen in Spain (namely front and rear wings) are to those that will roll out for the first race in Bahrain. Likewise, engine modes and fuel loads are kept under wraps to muddy the water as far as possible while drivers are lifting and coasting constantly down the main straight to shed pace.

The quiet suggestion has been that the lap counter today is the more revealing measure given the regulatory overhaul. Such a big shake up has massively increased the number of variables for the teams to get their heads around so the more mileage they can clock, the more data that can be retrieved, which is crucial for increasing understanding. That aids the process of validating the correlation between what the teams have simulated and how the new challengers actually behave on track.

By that metric, the Ferrari duo combining to turn in 153 laps aboard the F1-75 is the most impressive ahead of Red Bull on 147 tours (solely the work of Max Verstappen), Williams on 132 and Alpine and Mercedes tied with the fourth-best tally of 127 laps.

Team lap chart

Extrapolate that all the way down the pitlane and it’s pacesetter McLaren (103 laps), Haas (43) and Alfa Romeo (32) that potentially come off worst of all. Alfa was quick to inform Autosport that it had endured a series of small gremlins in the morning, but it claimed nothing had been unforeseen, and it was still complying with its predetermined run plan.

Valtteri Bottas seemed unmoved by the compromised schedule, saying: “We did have some issues, and unfortunately the issues we had were pretty costly with time. But we understand it completely, and we know how to fix it. We just didn't have enough time during the day to fix it properly.

“For sure today was compromised, I mean we lacked quite a bit of mileage, but at least we got some running, and some kind of idea how to how to progress for tomorrow. We just hope that we can get good two days here in Barcelona after this.”

Alfa Romeo logged the fewest laps of any team due to problems for Robert Kubica

Photo by: Alfa Romeo

Haas, which opted not to develop its 2021 machine so it could pile resources into the VF-22, reported sensor glitches and a morning leak that required the floor to be removed.

But the sentiment so far, given the smooth running overall for the class of 2022, is that there’s only a paper-thin defence for why the three days in Barcelona had to be classified as a ‘shakedown’ in order to take place in private. Few in the paddock are blushing completely as to have justified the lack of a viewing public.

Given the limited data available, the rest of the main takeaways from the first day were rather more subjective.

From 10 feet or more, the side of the RB18 looks like its housing a bookshelf such is the savage undercut around the inlet and the large opening of the floor’s Venturi tunnels, which somewhat resembles a previous-generation bargeboard

What we did learn, though, is that it’s again possible for those without an engineering degree to differentiate between the cars should they all be painted white and lined up wheel-to-wheel. This is most acute with the varying approaches taken to manipulating the air flow around the sidepod.

PLUS: How the new F1 cars look from the Barcelona trackside

Ferrari has its dished top surface, which some have likened to a bathtub or even the run through Eau Rouge to Raidillon at Spa. The Haas is intricate up close, the Aston’s toast rack-style cooling louvres clearly identifiable from the side of the track.

But when it came to intriguing sidepods, Red Bull rather stole the show as its RB18 truly broke cover for the first time in the morning. When the team concluded its lengthy launch presentation on 9 February only to reveal a revised livery on the spec show car, it was apparent the Milton Keynes outfit was hiding something. The two schools of thought were that it either had dropped the ball or, more likely, was keeping the lid on something altogether more radical. The latter turned out to be true.

Dramatic cutaway under the sidepods on the new Red Bull were on display for the first time

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Beyond the switch to a pull-rod front suspension configuration, the aerodynamicist team led by Adrian Newey has gone to town. From 10 feet or more, the side of the RB18 looks like its housing a bookshelf such is the savage undercut around the inlet and the large opening of the floor’s Venturi tunnels, which somewhat resembles a previous-generation bargeboard. Where others have crafted svelte hips, Red Bull has cut away almost at right angles.

The intention, as explained by Autosport technical editor Jake Boxall-Legge is to produce and energise vortices to help shunt airflow outwards, guiding any tyre wake away from the floor area.

The slight caveat is that where Red Bull has stuck to its matte, dark blue livery and teamed it with the black carbon fibre floor, some of the nuance of the design is lost. That serves a purpose in deceiving prying eyes but hides much of the immediate differentiation that the new rule book has inspired. By contrast, the return of the silver paint at Mercedes reveals its smoother approach to the technical overhaul that might otherwise have been hidden under its previous Black Arrow paintjob.

A further observation from the infield, as recalled by Alex Kalinauckas, is that the braking point into Turn 1 doesn’t seem to have moved drastically from 2021. This is against expectation, with the new rules intending to increase stopping distances as part of the overall mission to boost overtaking. However, drivers are still stamping on the anchors around the 60-metre mark.

That, in turn, places a greater emphasis on the need for this new era of machinery to be able to sit in the slipstream of the car ahead and not shed quite so much downforce. Should the move to ground-effect have the desired effect of key architects Ross Brawn and Pat Symonds, then perhaps the similar braking zones can be overcome by cars exiting the final corner more closely to line up a move earlier down the straight.

But after day one in Spain, that for now remains the critical unknown which will be key to evaluating the success of the greatest rule change in F1 history.

The ability of the cars to follow one another remains a vital unknown

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images