F1 digest: Hamilton sets the pace and Bernie wants electric cars

Hamilton is fastest on final day of testing

Snow may have affected Formula 1’s pre-season testing but it didn’t stop Lewis Hamilton from setting the fastest time on the final day at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain.

The reigning F1 world champion “belied his lack of winter running”, says Sky Sports, to set the fastest time in Barcelona. Hamilton was only able to complete 25 laps in the first three days because of the winter conditions.

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The BBC called Hamilton’s lap “imposing” and said his pace underlined “Mercedes’s pre-season favourites status”.

‘We could go for it now’

After setting his impressive lap time in Spain, Lewis Hamilton said that Mercedes’s new W09 car “definitely feels better” than its predecessor.

The ten F1 teams return to the Circuit de Catalunya for the second round of winter testing from 6-9 March, but the British driver believes he’d be ready to race now.

He told Sky Sports: “We could go to Melbourne now and just go for it – I just want to race! It [the W09] definitely does feel like a better car compared to last year’s car, so that’s a positive.”

Why testing was ‘particularly untrustworthy’

While Hamilton set the pace in Spain, the BBC’s Andrew Benson said that this week’s pre-season testing “leaves few clues for 2018”.

Benson wrote: “The teams came out of four mostly damp and cold days with only a vague idea of what shape they might be in with their new cars. As everyone with even a modicum of interest in Formula 1 knows, headline times in pre-season testing are often an unreliable indicator of true competitive form. This year, this test, that is even more the case.”

Sky Sports’s Pete Gill agreed that the first week of winter testing “gave little away”, but one thing is certain: Mercedes are favourites.

Calling this week’s test “particularly untrustworthy”, Gill asked that if Mercedes are favourites, how far behind are Ferrari and Red Bull?

He wrote: “One useful yardstick at this time of year is to focus on the lap count rather than lap times. And it was here that genuine cause for predicting a close campaign could be found with Mercedes completing 306 and Ferrari 298. Both cars were reliable, both looked good on track.

“While Test One offered little scope for meaningful analysis, the body language of both teams [Ferrari and Red Bull] at Barcelona was interesting to note: assured and confident at Ferrari, almost belligerent at Red Bull as the team aim, in [Red Bull boss Christian] Horner’s words, to be the new season’s ‘disrupters’.”

Ecclestone: F1 should go all-electric

In an interview with The Guardian, former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone urged the sport’s new owners to “have the balls” and start an all-electric Formula 1.

Ecclestone, who was made F1’s chairman emeritus when Liberty Media took over last year, said: “Let’s make different types of cars, let’s speak to the manufacturers and start a new all-electric F1, a Formula 1 for the future.

“It would be a super Formula E, if you like. You can make cars be like an F1 car and the only thing you would miss would be the noise and I do not believe that people could not come up with something to make more or less the old F1 noise.

“They [Liberty] would need to have the balls to do it today. I think they will have to do it.”

What new car has the best livery?

Now that all the new F1 cars have been revealed for the 2018 season, the BBC has asked readers to choose their favourite livery. In a BBC website poll, McLaren’s “papaya orange” was number one with 23% of the votes. Renault finished second with 21% and Mercedes were third with 12%.