The only pre-season test of the 2023 Formula 1 season has come to a close, leaving fans eagerly awaiting the start of what is set to be the longest season in the sport’s history. Over the course of just three days and 25-and-a-half hours of scheduled testing time, almost 4,000 laps were covered, giving us an insight into which teams are in a strong position heading into the first race of the season and which ones need to up their game.
At the end of the test, it was Red Bull’s Sergio Perez who topped the timesheets, with his teammate Max Verstappen not running at all on the final day. Perez’s impressive performance was a full 1.3 seconds quicker than Verstappen had gone the day before, and he was also faster than Lewis Hamilton, who set his best time on softer tyres than Perez. However, it’s important not to read too much into Perez’s margin over his teammate, as Verstappen has been focusing on other areas of his performance during the pre-season.
One of the most encouraging signs to come out of the testing period was the smaller field spread, with the gap between Perez’s best time and the slowest driver’s time being just under three seconds. This is a marked improvement on last year when the gap was almost four seconds. Williams made an impressive leap of 2.5 seconds over their best time from the 2022 Bahrain tests, while Aston Martin gained 2.3 seconds from last year’s test and over a second over their best time from the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend. Even Mercedes managed to improve by more than two seconds, which is a considerably greater improvement than both Red Bull and Ferrari managed.
Of the three rookies embarking on their first seasons in Formula 1 this year, Nyck de Vries was the quickest despite not pushing close to his AlphaTauri’s ultimate pace on the final day. Logan Sargeant and Oscar Piastri will both be hoping to find more pace from their own cars next weekend.
While Red Bull may have set the pace on the final day of pre-season testing for the second year running, Mercedes are much closer to their fiercest rivals this time around. Ferrari also looked within reach of the world champions, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jnr posting near-identical times on the final day. Aston Martin’s best time set by Fernando Alonso was only good enough for ninth-fastest at the end of the test, but the team did not appear interested in carrying out any glory runs in the twilight hours, instead letting their consistent presence around the top five across the test do the talking for them.
Perhaps the most striking demonstration of the pre-season test was just how far teams have developed their ground effect philosophies just 12 months on from running the current generation of cars for the very first time. Despite the FIA introducing measures to curb porpoising that will almost certainly have reduced aerodynamic efficiency, Perez’s best time was 1.4 seconds faster than Verstappen’s quickest lap from the 2022 Bahrain test. This improvement would have beaten Leclerc to pole position in last year’s qualifying in Bahrain, although Perez benefited from one grade softer tyres than Leclerc used.
Overall, the pre-season test offered a promising start to the season for some teams, while others will be hoping to find more pace from their cars next weekend. With the longest season in Formula 1 history set to kick off soon, it will be interesting to see how the teams perform over the course of the year.