The five-day shakedown ended in Barcelona. The teams return to the factories. There will be two three-day tests in Bahrain in February.
The most laps were driven by Mercedes, which reached over 500 laps. All figures are anecdotal as the shakedown took place behind closed doors. Different sources give different figures, but they differ only slightly.
We primarily relied on data from the Spanish website SoyMotor.com, which was close to the circuit at all times.
The shakedown showed that the reliability of the current power units and cars could be at a good level right from the start, but of course the first races and drives in qualifying and racing mode will bring the real picture.
The smallest number of laps was driven by Aston Martin, which actually drove only one day – it arrived at the circuit on Wednesday and did not drive to the track for the first time until the afternoon on Thursday, when it drove 5 laps. He then added more rounds on Friday.
The Cadillac is second to last, but it’s still a huge achievement just to have arrived at the shakedown. A total of 164 laps means the team got a solid amount of data. This is a distance that corresponds to almost 2.5 grands prix.
Audi also drove a solid number of laps. Red Bull-Ford was the most successful of the “newcomers”.
Total number of rounds
| The team | Kol |
|---|---|
| Mercedes | 500 |
| Ferrari | 436 |
| Haas | 390 |
| Alpine | 347 |
| Racing Bulls | 321 |
| Red Bull | 303 |
| McLaren | 287 |
| Audi | 240 |
| Cadillac | 164 |
| Aston Martin | 66 |
Manufacturers
Manufacturers supply their power units to different numbers of teams, so it doesn’t make sense to add up the bikes. We therefore divided the total number of rounds by the number of teams and thus calculated the average. In the case of Mercedes, we counted on three teams because Williams did not arrive.
| Manufacturer | Bike per team |
|---|---|
| Mercedes | 378 |
| Ferrari | 330 |
| Red Bull-Ford | 312 |
| Audi | 240 |
| Honda | 66 |
(Un)used opportunities
Teams could go three out of five days. All teams started on all three days, except Aston Martin, which arrived only on Thursday, when it managed to drive 5 laps. On Friday, Alonso drove all day.
Williams did not arrive for the tests.
Fastest times
The times in Barcelona really didn’t matter – except perhaps for the initial basic comparison of the current cars with those of last year.
The fastest time was set by Lewis Hamilton – 1:16.348which is 4.8 seconds slower than his time on pole in Barcelona last year.
The current cars will of course be slower, but already during the season we can expect a significant acceleration. The 4.8s difference is quite solid. If we also look at Hamilton’s time last year, the difference will be only 4.3 s.
The teams didn’t go full speed, they hadn’t installed the final parts yet and above all it was really cold in Barcelona.
Top 5 times
- Hamilton: 1:16.348
- Russell: 1:16.445
- Norris: 1:16.594
- Leclerc: 1:16.653
- Antonelli: 1:17.081
