But while there were few shocks amid the opening action, one of the most intriguing aspects of the day was the fact that the lap times appeared to be quite adrift of where the old cars were.
The talk in the build-up to testing had been of the cars being a virtual match for 2021 machinery – despite earlier predictions that there would be quite a big drop off in lap time because of an overall reduction in downforce.
However, as teams settled down to testing the cars on the opening day of running, the initial impression was that perhaps teams had not managed to recover as much of the lap time as they had been expecting.
Norris’ best lap from the opening day of testing was 1m19.568s – which was well adrift from previous testing performances in Barcelona that have often provided a quite good indicator of overall car pace.
For the last pre-season test that took place at Barcelona back in 2020, Lewis Hamilton had topped the opening day with a 1m16.976s lap, before Mercedes…
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