A familiar pace at the front

NEW rules. New cars. Same result. Mercedes dominated the first day of Formula One pre-season testing, sending a message the overhaul of regulations may not derail the defending champion.

While Lewis Hamilton aimed for speed, new teammate Valtteri Bottas went for distance as they shared time behind the wheel of the revamped Silver Arrow. Hamilton took over driving in the afternoon and clocked the day’s fastest lap, bettering Sebastian Vettel in his Ferrari by 0.113 seconds.

In four hours of driving before lunch, Bottas outworked the rest of the field with 79 laps at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. That total surpassed the 66 laps of the Spanish Grand Prix at the same venue.

Only Vettel and Felipe Massa ended up with more laps, but that was in double the time following the entire eighthour session.

Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo managed only four laps in his Red Bull in the morning session when it came to a sudden stop and he and the car were left to go back to the pits.

Thankfully for the Aussie, Red Bull ironed out the problems and he was able to record 50 laps for the day, finishing with the fifth-quickest time.

“Today’s session was OK, I felt I got up to speed relatively quickly,” Ricciardo told the team website.

“We had a bit of a slow start this morning, but the afternoon was better and the last two hours were more like a test. It’s nice to end the day on a bit of a positive.

“There’s still a lot more to come from the car.”

He also suggested the drop in times in the 2017 season was going to be dramatic.

“The times Lewis was setting were already quicker than the times in qualifying last year, so it’s going to be faster,” Ricciardo said.

“We’ll hope to make steady steps tomorrow when Max [Verstappen] is in the car and then we can start to do some more trimming.”

Mercedes’ rivals are hoping the regulation changes will help them make up ground on a team that has won 51 of the past 59 races.

Other than Vettel’s positive showing, there was little sign the gap had closed.

Fernando Alonso was frustrated. After rejecting a Mercedes approach to replace Nico Rosberg, his McLaren again failed to do the job.

McLaren’s engine partners Honda blamed an oil system problem that took hours to fix.

“It’s definitely not a perfect start of the winter testing,” Alonso said.