Barcelona Testing Day 3: Hamilton leading, 5 red flags

Mercedes is showing a bit more of its potential with Lewis Hamilton setting the fastest time of 1’19’138 at the end of the session, one-tenth ahead of George Russell with a time of 1’19’233 and Sergio Perez with a time of 1’19’556.

This last testing day in Barcelona was eventful on the track. In fact, five red flags were raised this morning, notably due to a engine problem on Fernando Alonso’s Alpine, which had to park his smoking car on the side of the track and could only complete 12 laps. This demonstrates the weaknesses of the Renault engine announced by Alain Prost before his departure from the team in January. The other red flags were caused by Pierre Gasly and Guanyu Zhou going off the track twice, as well as Sebastian Vettel, without any serious consequences.

The Haas, stripped of its Russian title sponsor Uralkali due to the current political context, completed very few laps this morning due to an oil leak encountered on Nikita Mazepin’s car.

Same problem for Aston Martin and Sebastian Vettel. The latter immobilized his car on the edge of the track at the very end of the session due to a fire that was starting to emerge inside the car. The Silverstone team was unable to repair the damage in time and announced the end of their running during this testing period. This means that Lance Stroll was unable to take to the track this afternoon as planned.

In the early afternoon, the commissioners watered the track so that the drivers and teams could test the rain tires (intermediates and full wets). We were able to see Nicholas Latifi’s Williams and also Daniel Ricciardo in action.

Ferrari, for its part, has exceeded the 400-lap mark over the course of the three days of testing. The editorial team is preparing a comprehensive summary of these three days.

The session then ended on a dry track, with the drivers switching to slick tires.

The ranking of the third and final day of testing in Barcelona – Friday, February 25, 2022.