5 Things We Learned from Day 2 of the 1st 2016 Formula 1 Pre-Season Test
No fewer than eight teams passed the 100-lap mark on Day 2 of the first 2016 Formula One pre-season test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Tuesday.
Among them, thankfully, were McLaren-Honda, who finally appear to be making reasonable progress after enduring their worst season during 2015 in 35 years.
The team's lack of competitiveness saw Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button score just 27 points over the course of last season, with the team's struggles raising concerns over the former's willingness to continue in F1.
Since the end of last year, it had been thought that Alonso's first on-track appearance of 2016, and his first impressions of the new MP4-31 car, would decide his short-term future after a member of his own team suggested a sabbatical could be on the cards.
But after enjoying his first day back, Alonso is very much here to stay.
With a look at the still all-conquering Mercedes team, the head-to-head battle between Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo, the new-look Manor outfit's impressive decision-making, and the trials and tribulations of Renault, here are five observations from Day 2 in Spain.
Fernando Alonso Is Here to Stay as McLaren-Honda Run Reliably
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For Fernando Alonso, this was always going to be the day.
At the end of 2015, a season in which he claimed just two points finishes in 19 races, the two-time world champion dismissed chairman Ron Dennis' suggestion that he could take a sabbatical if McLaren-Honda failed to make progress in 2016, per Sky Sports' Pete Gill and James Galloway.
Yet, as reported by the Times' Kevin Eason, there was a lingering air of suspicion as Alonso took to the wheel of the MP4-31 car for the first time.
If he liked what he saw—what he felt—Alonso, it was thought, would be happy enough to continue the fight and drag this once-great team back toward the front of the grid.
But if the ghosts of 2015 returned? If he spent most of his time stuck in the garage? If he felt the team hadn't provided him with a car remotely worthy of his talent?
It would be someone else's problem and Alonso would disappear for a year, returning only if the team worked themselves into a position to challenge for podiums, victories and that elusive third world title in 2017.
Thankfully—for the team, the sport and Alonso himself—the Spaniard seemed to enjoy himself on his first appearance of the year.
In an uninterrupted day of running, he was among the eight members of the 100 Club with 119 laps to his name, and while the lap times were nothing special—Alonso completed the 10th-fastest time of the day on soft-compound tyres—it was the sort of steady, trouble-free session he needed after last season.
In a post on his official Instagram account, Alonso referred to the day as a "big day" and expressed how "proud" he was of his team. So will he be racing in 2016 after all?
"Yes," he confirmed to Sky Sports' live blog.
Mercedes Show No Signs of Stopping as Nico Rosberg Takes the Wheel
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When Mercedes racked up 157 laps on the first day of testing in 2015, it was regarded as an unprecedented feat for a new car.
But now? It's fast becoming the norm, such is this team's level of greatness.
After Lewis Hamilton completed 156 laps on Day 1, the W07 car was handed to Nico Rosberg for Day 2, and the German simply picked up where his team-mate left off.
Mercedes seem to make it a mission to be the first team to take the track every morning, almost as if they're determined to lead the way in every single department. And, sure enough, the W07 was the first car to pass the green light at the end of the pit lane for the second day in succession.
And from there, the car simply went on and on and on.
By lunch, Rosberg had 81 laps to his name, and when he hopped out of the car around five hours later—having presumably completed their program for the day, Mercedes noted on their Twitter account that they chose to stop running 10 minutes before the scheduled end of the session—he had increased his tally to a scarcely believable 172 laps.
It means Mercedes have completed 328 laps—almost the equivalent of five Spanish Grand Prix distances—over the first two days of testing.
Like last year, Mercedes have prioritised mileage over headline-grabbing lap times, and as such, Rosberg's fastest time of one minute, 24.867 seconds was only good enough for fourth on the timesheets—two seconds slower than first-placed Sebastian Vettel.
But with that lap being completed on the medium tyres, whereas Vettel's was done on the new ultra-soft compound, you start to get an idea of just how fast the new Mercedes could be.
And the big worry for their rivals is that they're showing no signs of slowing down.
Red Bull Still Not Fast Enough to Challenge the Leaders
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It was like 2014 all over again as the clock ticked toward lunch, with Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo fighting head-to-head on the track.
The sight of two drivers competing on identical tyres and apparently similar fuel loads is among the highlights of pre-season testing, but rarely do rivals engage in direct combat as early as the second day of running.
With around 30 minutes of the morning session remaining, Ricciardo surged to the summit of the leaderboard with a time of one minute, 24.298 seconds on the super-soft tyres.
Not to be outdone, however, Vettel fitted a set of super softs of his own and immediately went 0.6 seconds quicker than his former Red Bull team-mate.
Ricciardo responded quickly by calling upon the new weapon available to the teams in 2016—the purple-striped, ultra-soft tyre—and reclaimed first position with a time 0.1 seconds faster than the German.
But just as in 2014, when he fled for Ferrari just as Red Bull tumbled down the competitive order, Vettel had the last laugh by unboxing his own ultra softs and going 0.715 seconds quicker with a time of 1:22.810—the fastest time of the test thus far.
The fun and games, of course, didn't continue into the afternoon session. But the ease with which Vettel was able to instantly and convincingly better Ricciardo's times only served to underline the challenges facing the four-time world champions as they hope to return to the front of the grid in 2016.
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Manor Start Thinking Like a Big Team as Pascal Wehrlein Completes a Full Day
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As racing director Dave Ryan told Autosport's Ian Parkes, Manor don't want to be a big team.
Despite signing former Ferrari and McLaren employees—including Ryan himself—over the winter, the team know their limits and are willing to accept that they will never be anything greater than "a really strong independent team."
But that doesn't mean to say that Manor, despite being, according to Ryan, "the smallest team by a big margin," can't behave like a big team.
And that is what made their sudden change of schedule on Day 2 so impressive.
Manor initially intended to run Pascal Wehrlein, who completed 54 laps on Day 1, in the morning session, before handing the MRT05 to fellow rookie Rio Haryanto—still yet to get his first taste of the new car—in the afternoon.
Yet ahead of the afternoon session, the team's official Twitter account confirmed that Wehrlein—who added 36 laps to his overnight tally in the morning—would remain in the car for the remainder of the day, delaying Haryanto's debut until Day 3.
In an era of severely restricted testing, drivers surely need as much time as possible to acclimatise to and build a relationship with their new car, and the days of substituting drivers during a single day—unless those changes are enforced—should be over.
Wehrlein—who ended the day with 71 laps and eighth place on the leaderboard with a best time of one minute, 25.925 seconds—has had two full days to, as he told the team's official Facebook page, "explore and understand the car a little more," and now Haryanto will have two full days to establish his own bond with the MRT05.
Surely that represents the best possible preparation for both drivers ahead of their grand prix debuts in Australia next month.
Renault's Struggles Continue as Jolyon Palmer Finishes Early
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"Difficult," was how Jolyon Palmer described the opening day of pre-season testing for Renault, per Sky Sports' Ted Kravitz, after completing just 37 laps and finishing at the foot of the timesheets.
And the team's fortunes hardly improved on Day 2, with the RS16 continuing to be both slow and unreliable.
Palmer didn't appear on track until almost an hour of the morning session had passed, but he went on to complete a reasonable 41 laps ahead of the lunch break.
Yet despite having the soft tyres fitted to his car, Palmer's fastest time of one minute, 26.189 seconds was only good enough for 10th on the leaderboard and slower than Manor's Pascal Wehrlein and McLaren-Honda's Fernando Alonso, both of whom set their fastest laps of the day on the same compound.
For Renault's sake, you would have hoped that Palmer's pace may have improved in the afternoon.
But the 2014 GP2 champion was denied the opportunity to better his time after his car slowed to a halt in the first sector after around 35 minutes of the session, bringing his day to a premature end.
Despite adding just one lap to his morning tally, Palmer, for his part, took the positives out of another frustrating day, tweeting how "42 laps is better than 37 laps" and claiming the team are "moving in the right direction at least."
But even at this early stage, Renault seem to be the least convincing team running a 2016 car in Barcelona.
They did warn us it wouldn't be easy...
Timing and tyre data used throughout sourced from the Sky Sports' live blog, the Autosport Live Twitter account and the official F1 Twitter account.
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