Lewis Hamilton spearheads Mercedes one-two on final day of drama in testing

Lewis Hamilton testing in the wet in Barcelona — Photo: © LAT Images

Formula 1

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Hamilton spearheads Mercedes one-two on final day of drama in testing

Friday was punctuated by five red flags

Sam Hall

Friday 25 February 2022 18:07

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Mercedes put in an ominous display on the final day of testing in Spain as Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheets from team-mate George Russell.

Mercedes had enjoyed a solid first two days of running at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, but in the final sessions, the team let loose the W13 with both Hamilton and Russell revelling.

Former Williams driver Russell topped the morning timesheets in his final outing of the test and, after a session that took place largely on an artificially wet surface in the afternoon, Hamilton scored the time of the day with a one minute 19.138secs.

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With 94 laps in the bank, Hamilton also topped the mileage charts on Friday alongside Williams' Alex Albon.

Red Bull and Sergio Perez attempted to interrupt the Mercedes party at the front but the Mexican fell narrowly short, ending the day third and ahead of fourth-placed Max Verstappen.

As Mercedes and Red Bull climbed the order, McLaren and Ferrari headed in the other direction with Charles Leclerc the best of the four drivers in sixth.

For McLaren, Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris were P10 and P11 respectively.

A number of teams suffered reliability woes on the final day in Spain with Aston Martin, AlphaTauri, Alpine and Haas all unable to complete any running in the afternoon.

As a result, Lance Stroll, Yuki Tsunoda, Esteban Ocon and Mick Schumacher missed out on four hours of valuable seat time.

In each instance, reliability was to blame for this loss other than at AlphaTauri, with Pierre Gasly crashing the AT03 in the morning session.

Five red flags punctuated the running with Alfa Romeo rookie Guanyu Zhou the cause of two.