Mercedes and Red Bull at the top in F1 pre-season testing

Formula One debuted its new generation of cars in pre-season testing in Barcelona this week, and in the end it was still Mercedes and Red Bull dominating. Lewis Hamilton set the fastest overall time with Mercedes at the Barcelona-Catalunya Circuit on Friday, ahead of teammate George Russell and the Red Bulls of Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen. The Mercedes duo set their times on softer — and faster — tires. Hamilton said they were some “interesting few days” of testing. “It's not been the easiest or smoothest running, we have some obstacles to overcome," he said. “The car is a lot different to drive than in previous years, as are the tires, but we're working our way through our program. The whole team has done an amazing job this week. ... We've got a lot of data to go through from these three days and we'll just put one foot in front of the other and put in the work.”

Mercedes won seven straight driver titles before Hamilton lost the championship to Verstappen on the last lap of the last race in 2021. “We're not fully happy with the balance of the car, but we're here to learn and we've made some good experiments,” Russell said. “We are happy with the direction we are heading in.” McLaren and Ferrari were not near the top of the time sheets on Friday but had already shown their strength on the previous days. Lando Norris was fastest with McLaren on the first day and Charles Leclerc was quickest with Ferrari on the second day. “I don't think we're in an amazing place, but I think we're in a good place,” Norris said. “It's been a good start, we've kept things very clean. It's been productive and we have made progress.”

All of the top teams showed good reliability, although Red Bull struggled with a gearbox issue on the