2022 F1 Barcelona test: McLaren's Norris tops first day

The Briton’s late improvements on the C4 soft tyre meant he jumped ahead of Wednesday morning pacesetter Charles Leclerc, to lead the day with a best time of 1m19.568s, which was 0.597 seconds faster than Leclerc managed during the opening four hours of running.

Norris's afternoon did feature one notable negative moment, where he stopped at the pitlane exit, which was briefly closed, just before the end of the second hour and had to be pushed back to the McLaren garage by his mechanics.

As was the case during the morning, the session ran uninterrupted throughout – a continued surprise for anyone expecting the wholesale rule changes to mean the teams would struggle to quickly rack up significant milage.

But there was again a milage discrepancy across the grid, as Haas and Alfa Romeo – both of which switched drivers for the second session – ended the day on much lower totals than the leading squads in the milage stakes, which were headed by Ferrari’s 153.

In total, eight teams completed over 100 laps, with Red Bull second best on 147 in Max Verstappen’s hands all day.

For most of the afternoon there was little change in the timesheets before Norris’s late improvements, save for the drivers that had jumped aboard for the second session working their way up the leaderboard.

This included Carlos Sainz Jr, who took over from Leclerc at the wheel of the F1-75 and finished the day with the third fastest time – 0.251s slower than his team-mate’s best, also using the C3 rubber.

Lewis Hamilton was another driver getting their first taste of official pre-season action in the afternoon, with the seven-time world champion working his way up to a best of 1m20.929s – set on the C3 rubber – to end the day with fifth fastest time, one