Hamilton sets Barcelona shakedown pace for Ferrari
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Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of the Barcelona shakedown as Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull all topped 100 laps on a final productive day of long-running for most teams in Spain.

As the week of behind-closed-doors running at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya came to a close, eight teams were on track for Friday's final day.

Ferrari, Red Bull and world champions McLaren were joined by Aston Martin - whose first Adrian Newey-designed car completed its first-full day on track, with Fernando Alonso at the wheel - Haas, Audi, Alpine and Cadillac.

Mercedes - the team who finished the week with the most laps (500) completed - and Racing Bulls had already completed their respective three-day testing allocations on Thursday.

Full lap times have not been published officially all week due to the closed status of the shakedown but it is understood Hamilton topped Friday's running after posting a test-best 1:16.348 in his afternoon in the Ferrari SF-26.

That was a tenth quicker than Mercedes' George Russell went on Thursday when he clocked 1:16.445.

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Charles Leclerc reflects on a 'positive' final day of the Barcelona shakedown.

McLaren's Lando Norris had set a 1:16.594 earlier on during Friday afternoon, eventually finishing second quickest on Friday, with Charles Leclerc third having set the morning piece in the Ferrari on a 1:16.653.

Headline lap times in pre-season testing - particularly from this 'shakedown' week when teams' focus has been almost exclusively on testing the reliability and systems of their brand-new cars for F1's 2026 regulations - are notoriously unreliable indicators of performance given teams run different fuel levels, car and engine settings across their runs.

But Ferrari will certainly take heart from the SF-26's strong apparent early reliability.

Having completed almost 300 laps across the car's opening two days on track, Leclerc and Hamilton combined to add 145 more to their tally on Friday - taking the team's overall count for the week to 440.

McLaren, too, will be pleased to have racked up 166 laps between Norris and Oscar Piastri after a fuel system problem curtailed the latter's Thursday running in the MCL40.

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Oscar Piastri reflects on a smoother day of the Barcelona shakedown after struggling with issues earlier in the week.

Red Bull, meanwhile, completed 118 with Max Verstappen at the wheel of the RB22 all day as the team returned to the track three days on from Isack Hadjar's crash in the wet.

Alonso put 61 laps on the new Aston Martin after its brief on-track debut on Thursday.

More to follow...

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