“There is a lot of excitement, not only in Ferrari but around the whole paddock,” Hamilton’s team-mate Charles Leclerc said.
“We have to adapt as drivers and teams to try and find ways to maximise what is our new package, especially now with this energy management that is so much more than in the past.”
Teams were allowed to run on a maximum of three days of their choosing out of the five. Mercedes had not only completed all their running by Thursday, but they finished before even the end of the day.
Russell was generally positive about the new-style cars.
“It is very different,” he said, “but when you wrap your head around it, it feels quite intuitive.
“From a fan perspective, there is an opportunity to see more exciting racing, and I don’t think you will see potentially some of the negatives we will feel from the car in terms of the recharge, but that will evolve so much over time.
“Overall, I’m just really glad the cars are smaller now. I was a fan of the bigger cars when they came in in 2017, visually, but having driven them, they were too big, and now they just look cool.”
Ferrari also ran reliably and so, most impressively, did the two Red Bull teams.
Red Bull are starting this new era of F1 with their first in-house engine, developed in conjunction with new partner Ford. Russell went on record to say how impressed he was that the car had run so trouble-free.
The biggest problem Red Bull seemed to have at the test was driver-inflicted. The team made the somewhat odd decision to run in the rain on Tuesday, something only Ferrari did as well.
New driver Isack Hadjar crashed in the afternoon in the quick final corner, having just switched from full wet tyres to intermediates. The Frenchman did enough damage that the team needed to ship in new parts, and Red Bull could not run again until Friday even if they had wanted to.
Most teams had problems of some kind or another, though.
World champions McLaren started the test late, because the car was not ready until Wednesday.
They said that was a deliberate decision to ensure they had as much design and development time as possible, and it seemed to have not affected them when Norris impressed on the first day of the car’s running on Wednesday.
But McLaren’s late arrival meant their flexibility was reduced, and when a fuel-system issue occurred on Thursday, they lost a lot of running time when they decided to strip the car down and ensure they fully understood the problem.
For all the concentration on reliability, teams were of course trying to glean any snippets they could about relative pace.
Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen said: “We’re all looking at lap times, of course, trying to guess what fuel loads everyone has got.
“You speculate about other people’s and you try to persuade yourselves you’re competitive, but by the end of the Bahrain tests (in February) we will see long runs, which is where you do your calculations.”
As ever at this time of year, on the record the teams were giving nothing away, emphasising they didn’t – couldn’t – know where they stood. And pretty much every single one uttered the word “positive” about how the test had gone for them.
Team insiders, though, say a picture did seem to emerge. Unsurprisingly, the top teams look in good shape. As far as it is possible to tell, behind Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull all seem to be in a similar competitive ballpark – or “within the noise of data,” as people in F1 like to say.
Alpine, who finished last in 2025, seem to have made a significant step forward having switched to Mercedes customer engines. They, Racing Bulls and Haas are the midfield, it seems.
The new works Audi team, the German manufacturer having taken over Sauber and produced their own engine, were stymied by a fair few reliability problems early in the test.
And all-new Cadillac, as expected, are at the back, was the general view.
One big thing all the teams learned was that on-track running meant rapid learning and progress, because of the complexity of the new cars, and the time it takes to build up the knowledge to getting the best out of all the systems.
This may well be why the factory teams of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull did so well, as they have the most experience of what their new engines need and how they should be run.
And this means Williams, who did not even attend the test because their car was not ready, are significantly on the back foot going to the final two tests in Bahrain because they will be effectively two weeks behind everyone else.
