There’s a familiar trap with the first day of winter running: everyone wants a pecking order, and the cars spend most of the day refusing to provide one. But even through the fog of unofficial timing and mixed programmes, Barcelona’s opening Monday did at least offer a couple of clean signals — namely that Red Bull turned up ready to work, and that Isack Hadjar didn’t waste any time looking like he belongs.
Hadjar ended Day 1 on top of the pile with an alleged 1m18.159s, clocked during a productive 107-lap shift in the new RBPT-powered RB22. With no official live timing feed available to media, the lap times and counts doing the rounds in the paddock are stitched together from multiple sources and should be treated with the usual testing caution. Still, it’s hard to ignore a rookie’s first headline moment in Red Bull colours, particularly when it comes attached to proper mileage.
Mercedes, as ever, looked like it was collecting data rather than chasing the bulletin board. George Russell was second on the day, 0.537s down, after 93 laps — a solid, tidy workload that told you more about the team’s priorities than its outright pace. The more revealing Mercedes line in the timesheet might actually have been Kimi Antonelli’s: fourth, 2.541s off, and 56 laps on the board. That’s not a glamorous number in a world where teams will talk themselves into “race distance plus” on Day 1, but it’s more than enough to get a new-era car’s baseline established and a young driver’s feedback loop up and running.
Alpine’s Franco Colapinto popped up third, two seconds adrift on the list with 60 laps completed. Again, times in testing are a minefield — fuel, tyres, run plans, and the old trick of looking quick early for a bit of internal reassurance. But Alpine will still take the calm optics of a car circulating without drama and a driver delivering something that resembles a statement time, even if the stopwatch is only telling half a story.
The headline for sheer output belonged to Haas. Esteban Ocon logged a hefty 154 laps, the kind of number that tells you a team’s first priority is simply getting the thing to behave like a racing car for long stretches. That’s not the sexiest form of progress, but it’s the sort that matters when the regulation cycle resets and everyone’s reliability margin gets squeezed. If you’re racking up laps on Day 1 while others are interrupting runs, you’re already learning faster — even if it never trends on social media.
Further down, Liam Lawson banked 88 laps for Racing Bulls and ended up sixth on the unofficial list, 3.354s back. His day looked like the classic “do the work, don’t make noise” programme — which, in a season like 2026 where the competitive order is expected to be volatile, might not be a bad way to start.
The two Cadillacs were the day’s split-screen story. Valtteri Bottas managed 33 laps and finished seventh on the sheet, while Sergio Perez’s run count stalled at just 11 laps, leaving him ninth and nearly eight seconds off. Nobody serious reads into gaps like that on Day 1, but low mileage is low mileage. When you’re trying to build procedures, validate systems and give drivers repetitions in a new car, every lost hour costs you twice: once in the garage and again when you’re still catching up while others move onto performance work.
Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto rounded out the order with 27 laps and an unofficial time 7.137s off the top. Like Cadillac, the lap count is the more meaningful number right now; performance chasing can wait until the basics are locked in.
Here’s how the unofficial Day 1 classification was circulating in Barcelona:
1. Isack Hadjar, Red Bull — 1m18.159s (107 laps)
2. George Russell, Mercedes — +0.537s (93 laps)
3. Franco Colapinto, Alpine — +2.030s (60 laps)
4. Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes — +2.541s (56 laps)
5. Esteban Ocon, Haas — +3.142s (154 laps)
6. Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls — +3.354s (88 laps)
7. Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac — +6.492s (33 laps)
8. Gabriel Bortoleto, Audi — +7.137s (27 laps)
9. Sergio Perez, Cadillac — +7.815s (11 laps)
If Day 1 had a theme, it was this: the teams that look most comfortable are the ones doing long, uninterrupted stretches. That doesn’t guarantee pace when the engine modes go up and the fuel loads come down later in the week, but it does buy you the one thing no one can fake in pre-season — time on track.
And in that respect, Red Bull and Haas left Barcelona with the cleanest receipt. The stopwatch can wait; the mileage can’t.
