Lando Norris topped the timing charts on the first day of pre-season testing in Barcelona ahead of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
Pre-season testing in Barcelona is finally underway. All ten F1 teams have now tested their 2022 cars on the first day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.
At the end of over nine hours of running, McLaren star Lando Norris ended day one on top. The Brit completed 103 laps, putting in the fastest lap-time of 1.19.568. He finished ahead of the Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
Norris however, is not particularly pleased about finishing P1 in the first outing of 2022. He feels that his early pace would lead to people thinking that he has the fastest car on track, something he insists he doesn’t.
“I didn’t want to be P1. If anything I would rather be last,” Norris said. “Because now expectations will be so high. And everyone thinks we are incredible. But I think we were just on a different run plan to the other people.
“I think we will see in the next few days, people will probably go much quicker than what I did. It was still a good day, we learnt a lot of things.”
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Ferrari were dominating day one of pre-season testing before Lando Norris took the fastest lap
This year’s pre-season testing has drawn in more attention than ones in the recent years. Major regulation changes are expected to shake the field up, and fans want to catch a glimpse at how the new cars look on track, before the real racing action starts next month.
Ferrari is the team that everyone’s talking about ahead of the new campaign. Pundits and fans expect the Italian team to rise from the ashes and compete for race wins and potentially the Title, once again this year.
Day-1 of pre-season testing was particularly strong for the Maranello outfit. Leclerc and Sainz were at the top of the timing charts for the majority of both sessions. This was before Norris ended the day strongly to take P1 away from Leclerc, and end the first day at the summit.
However, it’s way too early to make anything out of the lap-times we saw on Wednesday. The set-ups that teams are running in Barcelona are very different from the ones they’ll use at next month’s testing in Bahrain.
Pre-season testing in Barcelona continues on Thursday and Friday. Both McLaren and Ferrari will be looking to continue their strong start to the year moving forward.
Also read: Christian Horner surprised by the performance of the new F1 cars
