Barcelona F1 Test Day 1: Driver & Team Quotes

Nine teams took to the track, with Williams forced to miss the first two days due to delays in the build of the FW42, with eleven drivers doing duty on a glorious sunny day, ideal for testing.

Team Report: "Today was the first of four days of pre-season Formula 1 testing currently taking place at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. At the wheel of the Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow SF90 was Sebastian Vettel. The German completed a total of 169 laps, 72 in the morning and a further 97 in the afternoon. The first item on the agenda was a check of all the car systems, followed by a series of runs with the car in different configurations. Sebastian was able to complete the planned programme for the day without any problems. He ran various tyre compounds in order to analyse the car’s behaviour on each of them. His best time of 1’18”161 was set before the lunch break."

Sebastian Vettel: “The first impression from today is very good. I could not have hoped for a better day, as the car worked really well and we had no issues slowing us down. We completed the programme just the way we wanted. Coming here I was pretty open-minded and had no expectations and I didn’t need that much time to familiar with the car, as it was making everything quite straightforward for me. I must say I am still a bit rusty, as I haven’t been driving for several months, but I’ll sleep well tonight”. “It is too early to sum it up, as it’s just the first day – Vettel added – but I would like to send my compliments to everyone back at the factory in Maranello for how they tackled all the new rules and what they put on track today and also how the team is handling the car in a well-prepared way."

Carlos Sainz: “It looks like our hard work has paid off today. It’s been a very positive start as we’ve been able to run without big issues, play a bit with the set-up of the car and gather data to analyse. Good job everyone, because almost 120 laps on the first day is a good step. There’s still a lot of margin to improve the car. Following today’s work, we know more clearly the direction we want to try. Now we have the information for a strong debrief, so we will keep working and moving forward.”

Gil de Ferran, Sporting Director: “Today was a positive day, where we completed nearly every test we had planned, and had very few issues to contend with. Carlos is acclimatising well to the team. Bearing in mind that this is his first official day of 2019 as a McLaren driver, having a high-mileage, trouble-free run is a very satisfying outcome following the hard work everyone has put in over the winter. Similarly to today, we have an extensive plan pencilled in for Lando tomorrow, as he drives the MCL34 for the first time. All-in-all, today was a good first step for our team in 2019.”

Valtteri Bottas: "I quite enjoyed this morning, it's good to be back at the track. I did 69 laps and there were no major issues with the car, so it was a relatively successful run. Since the car is brand new, we immediately found ways to improve the balance and the behaviour and we will continue to work on that in the next days. It's good to see the car running well and it proves that the entire team is doing a great job, both in Brackley and Brixworth, but also here at the track. I'm looking forward to more time in the car tomorrow afternoon."

Lewis Hamilton: "It's good to be back in the car and it's great to see the car is running as smoothly at it is. It feels quite a bit different compared to last year and we're now getting to know it, trying to understand the balance and trying to understand the characteristics we're working with. It's been a positive first day, we got through our running plan and there's lots for us to learn about the new car which we will be working on."

James Allison, Technical Director: "The first day with a new car is always a really exciting thing and today was not a bad start. Both drivers had their first taste of the W10 and got 150 trouble-free laps on the board by the end of the day. We managed to squeeze quite a lot into this first day of running, finding out both how the 2019 tyres are working and also learning about the way the car responds to set-up changes. Today was not about absolute pace and we're reasonably pleased with the handling of the car and the way it is behaving."

Sergio Perez: “It was a typical first day of testing, with a lot of checks and not a lot of running. It was effectively our shakedown and, even though the day was a bit shorter than expected, I felt quite happy with the car straight away. The mileage wasn’t great but I think it was still a promising start. I am happy with the performance we managed to get out of the car and with its balance. The conditions weren’t great: the track was quite cold and green to begin with, but I end the first day feeling positive. It was important to start understanding the car as much as we could and for me to make myself comfortable with it as a driver.”

Tom McCullough, Performance Engineering Director: “It’s always exciting when the car finally takes to the track for the first day of testing. Today was basically our shakedown and the first opportunity to check installation of all the new parts and various systems. We had some teething problems, which caused us some downtime across the day, and a small oil leak, but nothing overly concerning. Sergio was very upbeat about the initial feeling from the car and the baseline set-up so that’s really encouraging feedback. Tomorrow Lance will get his first experience of the new car with the focus on aero data collection and adding more miles to the car.”

Daniil Kvyat: “It was a productive day today and it’s good to be back behind the wheel. We managed to do quite a few laps, which is important on the first day of testing to get some mileage under your belt so you can see how the car behaves. It’s too early to draw conclusions, but I think we have a good baseline for now and we need to keep working on that. Every time we were on track it was smooth running, and everyone was operating at a high level. I have another three days in the car which gives us the chance to improve on the things we worked on today, so we will look over the data to see which direction we will take on Wednesday. I worked with my new engineers and we all understood each other well straight away. It was certainly a good start.”

Jody Egginton, Deputy Technical Director: “It is good to get back to the serious business of testing and start to understand our new car. We end today having started down the road of achieving this and as always we are starting to answer questions but also generating new ones at a similar rate! With the cold conditions early on, we worked through a programme of some basic tests before moving to longer runs as the morning progressed. In the afternoon, we also conducted a series of longer runs that has allowed us to get our first view of the chassis, PU, and tyres over longer runs in reasonably stable track conditions. In this respect, I think it's been quite a good day, although we have lost some time in the garage with a number of small niggles which means we have a few tests and test items to carry over into Day 2. On the PU side, it’s been a smooth test today with the Honda guys working through their program in a systematic fashion so, in this respect, it’s business as normal. It’s Day 1 of the 8-Day winter test program and there are still many experiments to conduct, new parts to evaluate and boxes to tick before Melbourne. We will stay focused on the task in hand with Alex stepping into the car for what will be his first full day of testing in a F1 car, and we are confident of making more progress with STR14, and Alex, tomorrow.”

Toyoharu Tanabe, Honda F1 Technical Director: “Today we carried out basic function checks on the 2019 specification PU, with both our teams. It was a trouble-free day on the PU side, which is a positive start to the test. As this is our second year with Toro Rosso, we have further developed our working methods together and we can expect to operate at a higher level this season. We hope to continue this good momentum over the remaining seven days of testing.”

Team Report: "Renault F1 Team began preparations for the 2019 FIA Formula 1 World Championship with a productive first day of pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Spain, accumulating 109 laps. The team’s main focus for day one was building mileage in the Renault R.S.19 and ensuring the various systems on the car were working as designed. Running went as planned with setups voluntarily consistent across tyres, engine and energy management."

Nico Hülkenberg took the wheel of the R.S.19 for the first time in the morning session with Daniel Ricciardo making his debut for the team in an official session during the afternoon.

Nico drove 65 laps in his morning stint posting a best time of 1min 20.980secs with a focus on reliability and predominantly longer-based runs. Daniel – who drove 21 laps (98km) on a promotional filming day on Saturday – extended his time in the R.S.19 with 44 laps in Monday’s afternoon session, recording a 1min 20.983secs as his fastest time, as he continues to grow accustomed in new machinery.

Nico Hülkenberg: “It was fun and very enjoyable to be back driving a Formula 1 car. You forget how fast these cars are, especially Turns 3 and 9 around here, so it’s great to be back driving again. My first impressions are promising, we didn’t have too many problems this morning and that meant we were able to get a decent amount of laps in. We were looking to start on the right foot today so it’s good to get 65 laps on the board and ease ourselves back in. We have things to assess and I’m looking forward to continuing the work over the next couple of days.”

Daniel Ricciardo: “It’s a good feeling to be behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car again after a long winter waiting. Today was about bedding ourselves back into it and, for me, continuing to learn about a new car and a new team. It was a decent afternoon and it’s important we keep increasing our mileage. We have plenty to analyse but it’s been a promising first official day. I’m excited to hit the track again and develop this new relationship.”

Claire Williams, Deputy Team Principal: “It is looking more likely than not that we will now not be in a position to run on track until Wednesday at the earliest. This is obviously extremely disappointing, but it is, unfortunately, the situation we are in. We will be getting the FW42 on track as soon as we are able.”

Romain Grosjean: “I think we can be happy enough with our day, in terms of the car’s feeling. We didn’t have a smooth run in the morning, but saying that, the afternoon went better. We had lost a fair bit of track time, but we recovered to put in some good runs. The team’s done a good job again to produce a car that’s very nice to drive. There’s more work to do obviously, we need to understand the car, but at the minute I’m very happy with what we’ve got.”

Guenther Steiner: “Not the best day today. In the morning we had an issue with the control of the fuel pumps, which forced us to stop out on the track. That lost us some time. We made some of that back up in the afternoon and got some running in. We can start to understand the car, but it’s much too early to see how good we are.”