Scuderia Ferrari had a positive start to the 2022 Formula 1 pre-season testing session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Wednesday, with the Maranello team’s drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finishing second and third on the final timesheets.
Only McLaren’s Lando Norris was better than the two F1-75 cars on a day that began with Charles Leclerc on track in the morning session. The Monegasque driver completed 80 laps, using the C2, C3 and C4 compound tyres, getting through the planned pre-lunch break programme. His fastest lap time was 1:20.165s, set on the Pirelli C3 tyres.
The Monegasque driver’s Maranello teammate Carlos Sainz took over driving duties in the afternoon. The Spaniard continued Ferrari’s programme and completed 73 more laps (341 km), also using the Pirelli C2, C3 and C4 compounds. His best time was a 1:20.416s set on C3 tyres. Therefore, the F1-75 completed a total of 153 laps, equivalent to more than 711 kilometres, most of all the cars on track.
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Here’s how the Italian media reacted to Ferrari’s debut in the Barcelona testing:
In La Stampa Stefano Mancini underlined how “the first day of testing will mean little, but in 2020 the fastest was Lewis Hamilton, who later became world champion, and last year Max Verstappen, who later won the title on the last lap of the season. For this reason, Ferrari can breathe a sigh of relief […]. This debut was eagerly awaited in Maranello. After years of crisis and the rebuilding of a winning team, this moment was like the night before the exams. The first results on the track have brought smiles. The meaning of the day? Great general reliability and long series of runs to collect data which will be compared with those predicted by the simulation systems. […] If everyone did the same job, it is true that Ferrari did it at a faster pace […] ”.
Daniele Sparisci expressed similar thoughts in Corriere della Sera: “On the first day of the new era of Formula 1, Ferrari was prepared. The debut of the F1-75 was more than convincing on the Montmelò circuit: the tests serve to gain confidence with the new ground-effect single-seaters […]. […]. The time trial verdicts at this stage count for little. The mileage indices are much more important: the Ferrari drivers completed 153 laps, equal to 711 km (the equivalent of almost two and a half GPs) like no other team. We needed answers on the reliability and correlation of data between computers and track, they arrived […]. What was convincing was the team’s ability to find the time in very different track conditions, with temperatures ranging from 3 to 22 ° C. It is a clue […]. Getting excited would be crazy, but from the drivers’ impressions it was a good start […] ”.
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