More to come from new Ferrari – Vettel

The German topped the first morning with a lap of one minute and 24.939secs – five-tenths of a second quicker than Hamilton and potentially reigniting the Scuderia’s battle with Mercedes early, according to Crash.net. Alfonso Celis, Force India, 1:26.298, +1.359, 58 6.

However, once again Mercedes were arguably the most impressive performers as Rosberg completed 81 laps and went within 0.2 seconds of his qualifying lap to land pole position at the same circuit for last season’s Spanish Grand Prix on slower medium tyres.

But before launching into the debut of the new vehicle and the first day’s testing of the new season in Barcelona, Hamilton said: “That’s pretty amusing because he had four years of it and l’ve only had two. There’s still a lot of stuff that we know is coming, and we know we have to improve, but overall for these two days I’m fairly happy”.

“In the first day we have already done more than 60 laps which is very encouraging”. Hamilton is chasing his fourth Drivers’ Championship while Rosberg is out to finally notch up a title of his own. The Briton was sixth fastest with a 1m26. However, Hamilton completed 66 laps to Vettel’s 36 before the drivers were taken off the track for a lunch break.

The testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya will continue until Thursday.

Meanwhile Hamilton brushed off the importance of Nico Rosberg’s storming end to last season and joked he hadn’t forgotten how to drive.

“What Christian Horner said I think is to remove some pressure, but after the big teams, they (Red Bull) are there”, said Sainz.

“Daniel reported nothing negative about the vehicle”.

“The first priority for the team this year was to iron out all the problems we had last year and we did that at least on the reliability side, so I am proud of the team and the job they’ve done”. Haas, the first American-led team in F1 since 1986, had to reinforce its front wings after a failure in the vehicle driven by Romain Grosjean on Monday. Team-mate Jenson Button had completed a total of 84 laps on Monday without any major reliability problems.

Ferrari’s Vettel declared last week that F1 is no longer “about the sport and which driver is the fastest” amid the new era of “far too complex” technical regulations.

“On outright pace … if you look at the times, you would say we are miles away, but we’re not going out there to set a lap time – we’re going out there to do different checks”, continued Button.

It was a trouble-free day for most.

Mercedes, clearly ahead of other teams in the last two seasons, unveiled the W07 chassis featuring “quite a lot of mini revolutions” compared to its predecessor. The test sessions in Barcelona should indicate if any of its rivals have made significant gains – or if once again the fight will be for second place.

He said: ‘I think the Mercedes domination has not finished, They are very, very strong and they have had some interesting days.