Driver: Max Verstappen

Car: RB16

Laps: 168

Best time: 1:17.516

Circuit length: 4.655km

Max got Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s 2020 Formula 1 Championship charge off to a successful start as pre-season testing kicked off at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Over the course of a marathon outing, Max racked up 168 laps of the track, the most of any single driver on day one.

Commenting on an intense day’s work behind the wheel and in the garage, Max said: “It’s been a good day. It’s always important to do as many laps as possible and today was a really good example of how you should do it, so I’m very happy. We have improved the car in the areas we wanted to over the winter and the car feels faster everywhere, which is great. The reliability has been good so far, so now we just have to do a lot more laps, test all the new parts and see where we can improve it further. Hopefully we’ll have done enough!”

Head of Race Engineering Guillaume Rocquelin added: “We had a really good day. We have a compressed test schedule this year so we are focusing on slightly longer runs than normal to get what we need from testing. It’s not always easy, as the conditions in Barcelona at this time of year are never ideal – it is just a bit cold – and the track surface is not really representative, but we got through the whole plan and more today, which is very encouraging. So, we have a tired, but happy driver and a lot of information to sift through. We’ll ramp things up again with Alex tomorrow, but all in all, a very positive start for us.”