FEBRUARY 20, 2019

Preseason testing day 3 - Expect the unexpected

"We always knew we would get P1!" Daniil Kvyat joked at the end of Day 3 of preseason testing after he had set the fastest lap time of the day and so far in testing.

Daniil Kvyat, Barcelona 2019
© RV Press

By Dan Knutson

"We always knew we would get P1!" Daniil Kvyat joked at the end of Day 3 of preseason testing after he had set the fastest lap time of the day and so far in testing.

"The priority was not P1," he said after he had set the fastest time of 1:17.704 in his Toro Rosso. "The priority was to bounce back after the first day of mine which wasn't ideal. It was a productive day."

Even though Kvyat had used the softest of the five Pirelli tire compounds, his first place in the time sheets was unexpected. He snatched the top spot from Kimi Raikkonen and Alfa Romeo with just 10 minutes remaining in the session.

"It has been good," Raikkonen said of his team's progress. "Obviously, we always want more, but that's the normal, never ending story. It has been some pretty decent two days as we are learning things. But we still need to learn more. We are just trying different things and obviously it's still early days. We haven't really done any set-up work."

Daniel Ricciardo wound up third. The Renault team had fixed the problem with the DRS system that had caused his rear wing failure the day before.

After being fastest on the first two days, Ferrari dropped to fourth on Day 3 with Sebastian Vettel behind the wheel.

"We tried a few things around also focusing on set-up and I can only confirm the positive impression I had on Day 1," he said. "Having now put 303 laps in the bag I feel comfortable to say we are satisfied with how the car is progressing."

Max Verstappen wound up fifth in the Red Bull.

"For the first two days of the test, we were concentrating on accumulating mileage but today we switched focus and began to work on car set-up," said Red Bull's Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin. "Today, we switched to a different rear wing that is more suited to this circuit. That put us in the right ballpark for this track, and allowed us to get a better understanding of what the car can do. We made a lot of set-up changes throughout the afternoon, performance improved and we're quite happy with how we ended the day."

Mercedes drivers Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton were 11th and 12th.

"Similar to the last two days, we did some more aero measurements in the morning," Bottas said. "After that we completed a full race distance for the first time in the new car, 66 laps in a row without any issues. We're learning more and more about the W10 and it again felt better than the day before. There's still room for improvement, but we're making progress every day."

After missing the first two and a half days, Williams finally got its new car on track with George Russell behind the wheel.

"Obviously I'd have wanted us to go flat out, but this is a part of any new car – go out and do the shakedown," he said. "It is more focusing towards the team and gathering all the data and information, and understanding the weaknesses of the car."

Preseason Test 1

Day 3 lap times

1. Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso-Honda 1:17.704

2. Kimi Raikkonen Alfa Romeo-Ferrari 1:17.762

3. Daniel Ricciardo Renault 1:18.164

4. Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1:18.750

5. Max Verstappen Red Bull-Honda 1:18.787

6. Nico Hulkenberg Renault 1:20.980

7. Romain Grosjean Haas-Ferrari 1:19.060

9. Pietro Fittipaldi Haas-Ferrari 1:19.249

10. Sergio Perez Racing Point-Mercedes 1:20.102

11. Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 1:20.693

12. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:20.818

13. George Russell Williams-Mercedes 1:25.625