Carlos Sainz was fastest as Ferrari locked out the top three at the post-season test in Abu Dhabi test. The Spaniard set a 25.245 to go a tenth and a quarter faster than teammate Charles Leclerc in the afternoon session of the mixed tyre and young drivers test.<\/p>\n
Sainz\u2019s time was just under a second and a half of Max Verstappen\u2019s pole time on Saturday. Each team are permitted to run two cars, using one for young drivers and one to help Pirelli with 2023 tyre testing.<\/p>\n
Several teams split the tyre test between its 2023 drivers. Sainz set his fastest time early on during the afternoon to go faster than his teammates Leclerc and Robert Shwartzman.<\/p>\n
Shwartzman had been shuffled down to sixth before setting a personal best in the final half hour to go third a hundredth off Leclerc. Pierre Gasly also set his fastest time in the last ten minutes, the Frenchman going fourth on his debut for Alpine. That put him ahead of Verstappen, the two-time champion taking over from teammate Sergio Perez who was thirteenth.<\/p>\n
Like Gasly, Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri made their debut for Aston Martin and McLaren respectively. Alonso had been third at the lunch break, the two-time champion completed ninety-seven laps before handing the car over to his new teammate Lance Stroll.<\/p>\n
Alonso was the first car out following his retirement on Sunday, and was also the first to bring out the red flag. But the Spaniard said he had a positive first impression of Aston\u2019s car.<\/p>\n
Piastri\u2019s debut for McLaren didn\u2019t go entirely to plan, a power unit protection trigger was set off, meaning the car had to be stopped on track in the third hour. Following that issue, the Australian managed to get back out completing more than two race distances.<\/p>\n
Nico Hulkenberg was another driver to make his debut for Haas, however, the German was forced to stop with a technical problem in sector two. But the team still managed to get him back out, allowing him to get back onto track and complete just under two race distances.<\/p>\n
It was important for Hulkenberg to make up for some lost time on his Haas debut, not only due to having had three years out of full-time competition but also because he lost two hours of running in the morning after stopping in the middle sector with a technical issue.<\/p>\n
Both Williams drivers managed to improve in the final hour, Alex Albon going sixth a tenth faster than his new teammate Logan Sargeant. Nyck de Vires made his debut for Alpha Tauri, the Dutchman was the busiest driver of all, completing a hundred and fifty-two laps.<\/p>\n
Liam Lawson rounded out the top ten going a hundredth and a half ahead of fellow Australian Jack Doohan. Alonso ended the day twelfth going two hundredths faster than Sergio Perez, Piastri and Felipe Drugovich.<\/p>\n
Valtteri Bottas going sixteenth four tenths ahead of Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes traditionally don\u2019t go chasing lap time, and the seven-time champion admitted over the weekend, he couldn\u2019t wait to see the back of this year’s car.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris was eighteenth a tenth ahead of Nico Hulkenberg. Yuki Tsunoda spilt the two Haas\u2019s going just over half a second faster than Pietro Fittipaldi. Frederic Vesti was two hundredths faster than Mercedes teammate George Russell, as Theo Pourchaire rounded out the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carlos Sainz was fastest as Ferrari locked out the top three at the post-season test in Abu Dhabi test. The Spaniard set a 25.245 to go a tenth and a quarter faster than teammate Charles Leclerc in the afternoon session of the mixed tyre and young drivers test. Sainz\u2019s time was just under a second<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[51,63,66,369,390,664,674,754,1553,1696,2060,2064,2175,2183],"class_list":["post-11381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-51","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-abu-dhabi-test","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1","tag-f1-testing","tag-formula-one","tag-pirelli","tag-robert-shwartzman","tag-tyre-test","tag-uae","tag-yas-marina-circuit","tag-young-drivers-test"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}