{"id":443606,"date":"2026-01-28T20:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T20:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/443606\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T20:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T20:00:08","slug":"mercedes-stays-on-top-of-barcelona-test-as-antonelli-goes-fastest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/443606\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes stays on top of Barcelona test as Antonelli goes fastest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrea Kimi Antonelli replaced Mercedes Formula 1 team-mate George Russell at the top of the timesheets as F1 concluded the third day of five at the Barcelona private test.<\/p>\n

After Russell set the fastest time<\/a> of the test so far on Wednesday morning, Antonelli was almost exactly two tenths quicker after taking over the W17 in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

Russell, who Mercedes said conducted the majority of his morning running on the hard C1 tyre, said of his experience: “The track temperature was in the low single-digits this morning, one of the coldest circuits I\u2019ve ever driven on, so there\u2019s little-to-nothing you can read into the times.”<\/p>\n

Mercedes will still be able to run another day – either Thursday or Friday – but has already ticked well over the 300-lap mark in the shakedown, as both Antonelli and Russell logged over 90 laps on the day.<\/p>\n

Its customer, reigning champion team McLaren, had a credible first outing with the new, test-liveried MCL40, to the tune of over 70 laps and the third-fastest time of the day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Drivers’ champion Lando Norris had the car at his disposal and lapped within a second of Antonelli, while team-mates Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly completed an all-Mercedes-powered top five on a reasonably productive day for Alpine, as the pair combined for 100-plus laps in total.<\/p>\n

Of the cars with non-Mercedes power units in them, the Ferrari-powered Haas was the fastest through Ollie Bearman, but after its early stoppage its day amounted to just over 40 laps – less than a third of what it’d managed on Monday – before another, more “serious” issue parked the VF-26 for good.<\/p>\n

Red flags were also caused by Audi<\/a> – very early in the day, due to a “real basic” hydraulic leak – and Racing Bulls.<\/p>\n

The latter team comfortably cleared 100 laps in the end with Arvid Lindblad, while Audi finally got some respectable mileage on the board with around 70 for Nico Hulkenberg – after its running had been cut short on Monday.<\/p>\n

Ferrari and Red Bull did not run after taking to the track on Tuesday (with Red Bull’s Tuesday having ended in a crash for Isack Hadjar).<\/p>\n

Aston Martin had earmarked Thursday for its first appearance<\/a>, while Williams is missing the test<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Day three times<\/p>\n

1 Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) 1m17.362s, 91 laps
2 George Russell (Mercedes) +0.218s, 92 laps
3 Lando Norris (McLaren) +0.945s, 76 laps
4 Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +1.788s, 58 laps
5 Pierre Gasly (Alpine) +1.935s, 67 laps
6 Ollie Bearman (Haas) +1.952s, 42 laps
7 Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) +2.058s, 120 laps
8 Nico Hulkenberg (Audi) +3.648s, 68 laps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrea Kimi Antonelli replaced Mercedes Formula 1 team-mate George Russell at the top of the timesheets as F1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-443606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}