Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc dominated pre-season testing at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya amid excited talk of Ferrari ending Mercedes’ five-year stranglehold on the sport.
- Lewis Hamilton is favourite to win the Spanish Grand Prix for a fourth time, and third in a row, on Sunday and retake the Formula One world championship lead from Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas.
If Mercedes are again quicker at such a benchmark circuit, where the champions have won four times in the last five years, the writing will be on the wall for Ferrari. They need to step up a gear and start turning things around.“The last four races, on average, we were not quite there so I think we are not the favourites going to Barcelona,” said Vettel, winner with Red Bull in 2011, after finishing third in Azerbaijan.
Mercedes principal Toto Wolff dismissed Vettel’s portrayal of Ferrari as underdogs for the first race of the European season. Bottas leads five times world champion Hamilton by a single point, with both men on two wins, by virtue of the Finn’s fastest lap in the Australian season opener. “It is always a special one for me,” said the 21-year-old of a track whose future remains uncertain, with talk of Verstappen’s home Dutch circuit Zandvoort taking the slot next year.
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