Lewis Hamilton was the fastest man in testing here after a late lap pinched the thunder from Felipe Massa, who was top of the timesheets for most of the day.
Hamilton waited until the final hour before, with soft rubber, he posted a time of 1min 23.022sec, two-tenths faster than the Brazilian’s Williams, which had been running on super-softs.
For most of the day Hamilton, like Mercedes in general, had been rather understated, but he could not resist showing his superior muscles as the sun went down over Catalonia.
Massa, the most revitalised Formula One driver of 2014, had been the fastest driver for most of the penultimate day of pre-season testing. His Williams put in a rapid 1min 23.262sec lap which was 0.014sec faster than Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari, though still slower than Nico Rosberg managed with soft rubber on his Mercedes on Friday.
Massa finished a busy morning with 44 laps under his belt, starting on medium tyres and moving on to softs and then super-softs.
Hamilton set the sixth fastest time of the morning but took a break 45 minutes before lunch so his team could work on a fresh setting for the afternoon run, which would pay dividends.
There were yet more problems for McLaren, even though Kevin Magnussen, standing in for the convalescing Fernando Alonso, put in 38 laps before lunch. McLaren’s afternoon ended early when the car suffered an oil leak.
McLaren’s racing director Eric Boullier admitted afterwards that the car may not be competitive until May. He said: “We won’t be as ready as we would like [for the first race in Melbourne], but we will do our best.
“We have covered most of the issues, and most of the systems. The positive is everything is working per design and plan, but reliability is a concern, clearly. I don’t know how long it’s going to take. I think it’s going to take a few races but at least by Europe we should be ready to be more competitive.”
When asked when he would know whether Alonso would be fit enough to race in Australia, Boullier said: “Soon. I think as soon as the green light is given by the doctors, so it should be next week. It’s not in my hands. But there is nothing wrong.”
Surprisingly, Honda, McLaren’s new engine supplier, revealed it did not know how many power units they had used during the session – “About two” – or how many tokens they expected to use to develop the car in the course of the season.
With just one day of testing remaining the general feeling is that Mercedes are some way ahead of the rest of the field, but that Williams, Ferrari and Red Bull have all made significant progress during the close season and might have a meaningful argument for second best.
McLaren are off the pace at the moment but in the paddock the feeling is they have a more than decent chassis and the resources to close the gap on the rest before the season is very old, if only the car and the Honda engine can stop rejecting each other like a pair of squabbling lovers.
A little further back, both Lotus and Sauber have caught the eye but testing latecomers Force India have ground to make up and on Friday and Saturday in Barcelona were happy to keep pounding in the laps in an attempt to overcome reliability issues.
