Giovinazzi tops morning session for Alfa Romeo

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

Antonio Giovinazzi went fastest for Alfa Romeo as the second week of F1 testing kicked of in Spain. The Italian set the fastest time inside the final 20 minutes, disposing Toro Rosso's Gasly to second.

The latter had topped the times for most of the session, after setting an early pacesetting 1m19.973s on the yellow Pirelli tyres (compound C3). It was only when Giovinazzi changed to the C4 tyre that he managed to turn his 0.7s deficit into an advantage.

Charles Leclerc ended up in third, setting competitive times after having had to sit out more than an hour of the session. After just 6 laps in the morning, Ferrari opted not to run for a while as mechanics had to sort out some cooling components. The result is that Leclerc finished his running time of the day with just 29 laps completed, a far cry from what the team had become used to.

Racing Point's Lance Stroll was fourth and briefly ran Pirelli's unmarked C3 tyre, used in order to help the manufacturer validate its compounds, and set his best lap midway through the session.

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Kevin Magnussen put Haas in 5th, just ahead of Williams's Russell. As Russell seemed to become ever more comfortable with the FW42, times improved, and Williams were well into the mix, after remaining largely uncompetitive on their earlier two days of testing.

Toro Rosso's Albon also sat out a large part of the morning session, and completed most of his laps in the last two hours of running. He ended up 7th, completed 39 laps.

That's still faster than Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton. The guys from Brackley were busy enough to check the new car upgrades and didn't really seem to focus on outright performance.

At the bottom of the timesheet are Hulkenberg and Norris. Both did have very different fortunes though, as Renault's German was able to complete 80 laps, hitting back from a low-mileage first week of testing.

Lando Norris on the other hand was halted midway through the session with a technical issue, which McLaren still need to clarify.