BARCELONA: Lewis Hamilton fired a warning to his title rivals yesterday with the Mercedes man pipping Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel on the opening day of pre-season testing here.
Vettel topped the timesheets in the first session but the Briton Hamilton, taking over the wheel of Mercedes’ imposing 2017 car from new teammate Valtteri Bottas, clocked the day’s best lap of 1min 21.765sec.
The Finn Bottas, world champion Nico Rosberg’s replacement at Mercedes, had topped the times at one stage in the morning but slipped to only sixth-fastest overall after Hamilton stepped into the cockpit.
With radically new rules the 2017 F1 cars are wider and more powerful than their predecessors. And combined with Pirelli’s wider tyres their extra oomph was plain to see in Barcelona with the fastest lap time for the entire eight days of last year’s testing lowered several times on day one.