What we've learned from the second F1 test

Though there were fewer tech innovations on show in the Formula 1 pitlane during the second week of 2020 testing than at the equivalent test last year, there was plenty enough drama - with spins the order of the day on Thursday before a flurry of fast times a day later as the pre-season came to a close.

The findings our team of reporters on the ground gathered are by no means definitive, but they do certainly give a clearer idea of who's nailed the final year of regulatory carryover, and who might be hoping the 2021 rules overhaul comes that little bit quicker.

After the final three days of testing, during which teams logged a combined 10,992 miles, here are the key things we learned about how the 2020 season is shaping up.

Mercedes "wins" the testing war

By Alex Kalinauckas, Grand Prix Editor @nauckas

Mercedes ended the first Formula 1 test of 2020 as the clear 'winner', and it appears to have retained its position at the head of the pack after the second three days of running at Barcelona.

The reigning champion squad topped the test two times with Valtteri Bottas's 1m16.196s on the softest C5 tyres on the final afternoon - although that was 0.464 seconds slower than the Finn went on his way to the fastest time in test one on the same compound.

There are several question marks hanging over the testing performance of Mercedes' nearest rivals, Red Bull and Ferrari, but there's little to suggest the team has lost its place at the head of the pecking order.

One of the strengths Mercedes enjoyed in 2019 was considerable superiority in slow-speed corners, and the W11's performance in the final sector at Barcelona suggests that advantage remains, as Bottas made up plenty of time as the lap went on as he flew to the top of the test two times.

But reliability is a major concern for Mercedes, which had to swap engines twice over the course of the two tests following dramas, with customer squad Williams also running into power unit problems.

"It was a difficult winter last year, and I think it's been a difficult winter this year," said Lewis Hamilton on the final day of testing. "There was a period of time with this V6 turbo where we were just gaining and gaining but eventually with everything you get to the point with limited returns [on] how much more can you squeeze out of the V6 turbo.

"How much further can you go? We are kind of in that peak top speed area now, where there is a kilometre more or a kilometre less you are gaining, for a lot of investment."

Red Bull is the big unknown

Alex Kalinauckas

Red Bull ended up with the second-fastest time across the two tests, but there are significant questions about its real potential.

For a start, Max Verstappen's 1m16.269s was set on the C4 rubber - so there is the possibility he could have gone at least half a second faster - and Red Bull also did not seem to do that much long running throughout testing. But the RB16 nevertheless looks firmly planted on track, and could yet prove to be a close challenger for Mercedes' W11.

Team principal Christian Horner and Max Verstappen certainly seemed relaxed about the outfit's prospects when speaking at an official press conference on Friday.

"It's been a pretty positive pre-season for us," said Horner. "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."

Verstappen and Alex Albon - who did not trouble the top of the overall times, as he ended up down in P19 but with a best time set on the much harder C2 tyres - did have several spins and off-track excursions, but the team seemed unconcerned and Verstappen attributed this to finding the limit.

The top three teams have retained their advantage, unsurprisingly, but it could well be that Red Bull has edged ahead of Ferrari during the off-season.

Ferrari still feels it's in trouble

Luke Smith, F1 Reporter @LukeSmithF1

After an understated opening week in which Ferrari played down its chances of matching the pace shown by Mercedes and Red Bull, most anticipated the second test to yield a major step forward for the Italian team.

But it never arrived. There was no Mercedes-style turnaround from 2019. No major update package. Perhaps Ferrari had not been bluffing about its pace all along. Maybe this was it.

Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc both completed qualifying runs on the softest compound, the C5, in their final full days in the car. Yet neither could bother the benchmark of 1m15.732s set by Mercedes rival Valtteri Bottas in the opening week.

Vettel's time was a full 1.1s off, while Leclerc still sat six tenths of a second adrift after a mammoth final day during which he completed 181 laps - close to three race distances.

Both Vettel and Leclerc have reported that while the Ferrari SF1000 feels stronger through the corners than its predecessor, it is now lacking on the straights and is "draggy".

Bottas said he did not read too much into those comments given the 'weird games' teams often play in pre-season testing - but in private, Ferrari's rivals have changed their thinking after crunching the numbers from the long run pace Ferrari showed on the penultimate day.

Unless Ferrari has produced one of the finest bluffs in recent years, it heads to Australia on the back foot. And by some way.

Drag is not Ferrari's only problem

Ben Anderson, GP Racing Editor @BenAndersonF1

Sebastian Vettel says the new Ferrari is too draggy, which created a straightline speed deficit to Mercedes in testing, but that's not the only problem the Scuderia has with its latest chassis.

Watching the car from trackside on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, it was clear the front end was creating trouble for Vettel and his team-mate Charles Leclerc.

Max Verstappen's Red Bull-Honda looked absolutely painted to the road through the medium-speed esses of Turns 7 and 8, Verstappen insanely late on the brakes and super early back on the throttle. Valtteri Bottas was achieving similar things with the Mercedes, just not with quite so much ease.

But whenever Leclerc came through this section the Ferrari simply refused to comply. The entry was fine, but the front end gave up grip every time he re-applied the throttle, forcing him wide.

A similar trait reared its head wherever I watched from. On Thursday, Vettel was struggling to get turned in properly at Turn 4 and was always making a wider arc through the tight left-hander of Turn 5 while chasing Lewis Hamilton before the Mercedes broke down.

Vettel was apparently complaining of understeer during week one, and given this car behaviour was still apparent towards the end of day five it would seem Ferrari was struggling to dial that out.

Regardless of the supposed mind games going on between the top teams concerning fuel loads and engine modes, it certainly looks as though Ferrari is currently behind Red Bull and Mercedes in terms of chassis performance.

Suggestions Ferrari might even struggle to beat Racing Point seem wide of the mark to me, though. The 'Pink Mercedes' is nevertheless probably the pick of an incredibly tight midfield pack in terms of overall pace, though I was also impressed with the behaviour of the AlphaTauri (though the Honda engines appeared to be running in a conservative mode) and the McLaren's prowess through the medium-speed esses.

The Williams is certainly better than last year's version in terms of consistency and driveability, but looks as though it still clearly lacks overall downforce compared to the other midfield runners.

Questions remain over top teams 'playing games'

Stuart Codling, GP Racing Executive Editor @CoddersF1

Valtteri Bottas nailed a key theme of this year's two pre-season tests when he described the measures teams take to mask their true potential as "a weird game". It's hard to disagree with this assessment given that the second test ended with nobody beating Bottas's fastest time from the first week, a 1m15.732s set on the morning of the final day on the softest of the five available tyre compounds.

It was an impressive lap, just three tenths off his pole time for last year's Spanish Grand Prix. But it came laden with caveats: it was set on Pirelli's C5 tyre, one that several other teams claimed was too soft for their purposes and had a tendency to degrade over the course of a single hot lap. And the on-boards revealed Bottas not having to make a single steering correction over the course of a lap in which he appeared to be driving with almost disdainful hauteur. It was hard to avoid reaching the conclusion that he wasn't quite exploring the new W11's limits.

In a similar vein, Ferrari seldom passed up an opportunity to deposit a bathtub of cold water over any positivity. Sebastian Vettel volunteered that the new SF1000 was "a bit draggy" in a straight line, while jaws dropped among the many tens of people watching Sky Sports F1 when team boss Mattia Binotto said on camera that he didn't expect to win any of the opening races.

Binotto also batted off suggestions that Ferrari had been running its power units at a lower level than its customer teams. Whence did that suggestion originate? In a peculiarly worthy 'think piece' published by Mercedes in one of its magnificently detailed press releases.

Ah yes, the games...

Picking a midfield winner isn't as easy as it looks

Jonathan Noble, Motorsport.com F1 Editor @NobleF1

Rules stability in Formula 1 often helps to bunch the pack up that bit more, so it's no surprise that as pre-season testing came to a close things look closer than ever.

While few doubt that Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari still retain an advantage at the head of the field, the picture behind them looks a lot more murky.

On pace and consistency, most people would put Racing Point at the front of the chasing pack, and potentially even as a thorn in Ferrari's side at the beginning of the campaign.

But some rival teams say their data suggests the Silverstone-based outfit may not be as comfortably clear of the midfield pack as that, and it could be a pretty intense fight for best of the rest.

Indeed, picking the teams from fourth downwards in order looks nigh on impossible at the moment, with Racing Point, McLaren, AlphaTauri, and Renault all having shown impressive speed at various times over the two weeks.

Even Alfa Romeo and Haas look as though they have the potential to get in the mix. And Williams, while admitting it is likely to remain at the back of the field, may be close enough to squabble too.

So whether it is a fight from fourth to ninth, fifth to ninth, or fourth to 10th, we don't know yet. What is clear, is that you can't separate that midfield pack at all right now.

Racing Point's pace looks real, but rivals aren't happy

Luke Smith

After creating one of the biggest stories of pre-season testing with its Mercedes W10-inspired car design at the first test, Racing Point continued to turn heads throughout week two with its pace.

Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll both enjoyed trouble-free programmes in the second test, and opted against too many glory runs on C5 tyres. Stroll's best lap of testing was set on C3s, but was just three tenths of a second off Sebastian Vettel's best lap on C5s.

Even more impressive was the long-run pace showed by Perez and Stroll, appearing to put the team within spitting range of Ferrari. Mattia Binotto said he thought Racing Point was "very close", while the team's own technical chief, Andrew Green, called its performance "promising".

The feeling is Racing Point could have leap-frogged the midfield to lead the early battle to be fourth fastest, but not without stoking the ire of its rivals.

The debate about links between big and small teams was fierce in the opening week, and showed few signs of going away in test two. Renault's Marcin Budkowski said the approach was "a slightly concerning evolution for the sport", while McLaren's James Key felt it was "fairly clear what is going on with some of the similarities that you see".

For now though, Racing Point remains completely within the rules. Haas team principal Gunther Steiner said he had no choice but to be happy with his rival's approach. "It's not illegal, so there's no point to be unhappy about something that is legal," he said. "Has it gone too far? I don't know. The rules are what they are, and they took this opportunity, and got where they are."

If testing is anything to go by, it could get Racing Point a long way through 2020.

Teams kept their upgrade powder dry

Jake Boxall-Legge, Technical Editor

Anyone expecting a real smorgasbord of upgrades for the second week of pre-season testing was probably left a little disappointed, as the cars appeared with only minor changes between the two weeks.

Between last year's pre-season testing sessions, Mercedes notably turned up with a completely rehashed W10, as other teams brought a number of test items as they grappled with the new-for-2019 aero regulations. Speculation suggested that a couple of teams would perhaps try that approach this time around, but ultimately the second week lacked the overall technical intrigue that last year's tests provided.

Perhaps, with a stable ruleset, teams are finding that the 'law of diminishing returns' is beginning to bite; although there were a few new parts peppered throughout the field in the final week, there were no innovations which could command the same column inches that Mercedes' DAS system could.

Red Bull trialled a new set of bargeboards (as seen in Giorgio Piola's image), for instance, opting for a Mercedes-style set of turning vanes with numerous horizontal slats to direct airflow around the sidepod. Mercedes itself had a few new parts, trialling a single swan-neck rear wing mount on the third day before seemingly discarding the solution.

Ferrari and Williams also had new spoon-shaped rear wings for the second week as they sought to assess parts for higher-speed circuits, and the latter team also cycled between engine covers to understand the relationship between the car and the wing and find the best solution available to it.

Alfa Romeo also reverted to type in the engine cover stakes, bringing back the mini shark-fin that it ran for the bulk of 2019, and the team also - like Williams - trialled a new front wing.

There were other, smaller innovations, but it felt like a series of race-to-race upgrades rather than using testing to explore a wider gamut of designs.

Or, perhaps, we were so blown away by the discovery of DAS that everything else pales into insignificance by comparison...

Coronavirus consequences are a growing concern

Lewis Duncan, International Editor @Lewis__Duncan

Off track, the coronavirus remained the major talking point, as the outbreak of the disease forced more restrictions to be put in place worldwide.

Spikes in cases in Northern Italy and a reported seven deaths in the region from the disease mean restrictions are now being enforced on Italian travellers.

Italian teams Trident and Prema had problems getting through customs in Bahrain for the upcoming three-day F2 and F3 tests, and this has raised concerns that Ferrari and AlphaTauri could end up being absent from the Melbourne F1 grid should they get caught up in the current travel situation surrounding Italy.

The question of whether F1 will carry on racing or not in Australia if both squads are absent has been posed, and Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto has urged F1 to provide assurances to teams so they know what problems they may face upon arrival in Australia before they travel.

Team bosses met with Chase Carey for an update on the opening three races in Australia, Bahrain and Vietnam, with the F1 CEO confirming that - for the time being - those events will be staged.

Should Ferrari not be allowed to compete in Australia, Binotto highlighted that this will affect the likes of Haas and Alfa Romeo too - and noted that tyre supplier Pirelli could face similar issues, which would affect the entire grid.

On Friday, MotoGP issued a directive that all paddock personnel will be granted entry to Qatar - which is not issuing visas on arrival to travellers from Italy or Japan - for the first race once relevant information has been submitted. They will then undergo a medical check upon arrival.

This will likely be something F1 will implement to ensure as much as possible that racing can happen.

But the coronavirus outbreak is a developing situation, and no upcoming races are guaranteed.