After Lewis Hamilton’s first year in the opening test session of this year’s 17th round of Formula One, Mercedes this time found themselves with George Russell – who was 15mm faster than Verstappen – in third place and Lewis Hamilton, who was still two and a half years old tenths away from fifth place.

With a time of 1:43.237, Sainz was around half an hour faster on the medium tyre, but Max Verstappen was only three laps around the track in the pits. RBR have been working feverishly on both the Dutchman’s RB18 and Sergio Perez’s RB18.

Things weren’t any better for Leclerc, who stayed in the Scuderia garage while mechanics worked on the F1-75’s bottom. Perez went out first of the three, on the soft rubber to simulate qualifying, but a prolonged slide on the fast right turn 11 ruined his lap – and the tyres.

At the same corner, a little earlier, there was also an exit for Russell – who managed to stop the Mercedes W13 before it hit the barriers and continued on. Meanwhile, on the soft rubber, Saint dropped to 1’42.751 for the first time – despite hitting the wall on the exit of Turn 19 – and Leclerc came in shortly after.

The Monegasse was simulating a race on the medium tire at this point, while Saint continued on a fresh set of soft tires to drop the first year by a further two tenths to a final 1:42.587. Leclerc was three tenths down on the medium tire as the two Ferraris seemed to have fairly good race pace on the lap sets.

The Monegasque was quicker on the middle tire than the two Mercedes on the soft ones, while Perez got back on track on the soft ones – but lost so much time in the middle section of the track that he decided to abort his lap and return to the pits and stayed 1.3 seconds ahead of Saint.

Verstappen, meanwhile, finally made it onto the track and began collecting data on the medium and hard tires. With all the wasted time in the garage, he didn’t finish his pre-race program, so in the end – like Leclerc and Perez – he went out onto the track on the soft rubber for the qualifying test simulation.

In the first section of the track, both Verstappen and Leclerc were 2 tenths faster than Saint, but they didn’t fare as well in the next two. This left them with the 4th and 2nd year. With Perez not in the top six, Alpine’s Ocon joined, with Valtteri Bottas and Fernando Alonso within a tenth of a second.

Finally, the biggest surprise of this time were Pierre Gasly and Alpha Tauri. The Frenchman was pitting in the cockpit when flames erupted from the vent above his helmet. Gasli was forced out of the car as mechanics rushed to douse the fire – with no injuries.