Lewis Hamilton may have missed out on testing on Wednesday but he made up for it today when he ended the fourth day of Formula 1 preseason testing quickest of all as the weather was kinder and enabled to teams to do useful mileage which was neglected them 24 hours earlier.
It was a busy day at the Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona after snowfall and cold temperatures kept most cars in the garage on Wednesday. Temperatures improved on Thursday for the final session of the week, and teams immediately sent out their cars.
After a wet morning during which Mercedes’ W09 challenger was driven by Valtteri Bottas, Hamilton took over in the afternoon and used medium tyres to post a time of 1:19.333.
Hamilton's benchmark time was half a second clear of Stoffel Vandoorne’s best in the McLaren running the new Pirelli hypersoft tyres, one of seven dry compounds on offer this year.
Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was third quickest with a time of 1:20.214 set on soft tyres, while Haas’ Kevin Magnussen was eight-hundredths of a second further back in fourth place with a lap set on supersoft tyres.
While most drivers took the circuit in the wet conditions in the morning, Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen was a notable absentee, with the Renault-powered team choosing to wait until the track dried before sending the Dutchman out.
But when he did take to the track Verstappen’s outing was a stop-start affair as mechanical gremlins affected his progress and then, later on, he suffered an off at Turn 12 which left him beached in the gravel. The car was recovered but Verstappen sat out the remainder of the session and completed just 35 laps all day.
After limited mileage in the early part of the week, McLaren enjoyed a solid final day in Barcelona. Second-placed Vandoorne handed over to team-mate Fernando Alonso in the afternoon and the Spaniard added a further 51 laps to Vandoorne’s 110 for the day’s biggest team lap total.
Pierre Gasly's Honda-powered Toro Rosso led the lap charts with 147. Vettel was next with 120 laps, followed by Vandoorne's 110. Hamilton ended the day with 69.
"It was really satisfying to have done so many laps," Gasly said. "It was really important for the team and also for myself to be able to learn so much."
Two-time world champion Fernando Alonso, the only driver to post a time on Wednesday, was fifth-fastest after running 51 laps with McLaren.
The session was stopped briefly in the morning after Marcus Ericsson went off the track in his Sauber. There was another red flag in the afternoon when Max Verstappen went off in a Red Bull.
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