Barcelona, 19 February 2020 – The first day of the first Formula 1 pre-season test went according to plan for Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow, apart from the fact that Charles Leclerc ended up giving the SF1000 its official track debut and not Sebastian Vettel as originally planned. The four times world champion was not feeling too well and so has delayed his turn in the cockpit until tomorrow afternoon and will then continue at the wheel throughout all of Friday. Leclerc did a total of 132 laps, 614 kilometres, the equivalent of two Grand Prix distances.

First laps. As is usually the case when a new car runs for the very first time in its racing life, the morning programme centred mainly on checking the baseline configuration and getting an overall evaluation of it. Charles then did some runs to check aero settings using the C2 and C3 compounds with different fuel loads.

Morning and afternoon. By lunchtime at 1pm, the number 16 SF1000 had completed 64 laps, or 297 kilometres, or almost a race distance. Charles was back on track shortly after 2pm and worked through the rest of the planned programme, doing a further 68 laps, making a total of 132. His best time was a 1:18.289.

Day 2. Testing at the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit continues tomorrow, with Charles driving the SF1000 in the morning and Sebastian taking over for the afternoon.

Charles Leclerc #16
“I was informed at 6.45 this morning that I’d be driving today, but that was no problem for me. It might have been trickier for those in the team who had to change the configuration of the car, which was set up for Sebastian.
For a first day, it was definitely positive, because we managed to get through the programme we had set ourselves. We weren’t looking at performance today, instead concentrating on learning about the SF1000 and getting in tune with it.
It’s too early to have formed an opinion of the car, but I felt comfortable at the wheel which is a good thing.”