Formula 1: Liam Lawson completes first week of testing new Racing Bulls car, beaten by new teammate Arvid Lindblad

Liam Lawson has completed his final day of Formula One’s first testing for the new season, logging another 64 laps in Racing Bulls’ new car, the VCARB03.

With drivers limited to three of the five available days on track, Racing Bulls completed their running at the shakedown test in Barcelona, where Lawson and new teammate Arvid Lindblad both got through their final laps for the week.

Having put in 88 laps on day one, and registered a best mark of 1m 21.513s, Lawson’s final efforts of the week saw him able to shave 2.673s off that time, and post a personal best of 1m 18.840s on day four.

“We just keep learning,” Lawson said afterwards. “We’re making big gains, but so is everyone else.

“[They’re] very, very different cars. We’re in a much better place than we were on Monday, which is the main thing. We just need to keep learning and improving the car.

“We’ve had a pretty strong test in terms of reliability, that’s been a box ticked. In terms of expectations, it’s hard, we don’t know where anyone else is. That’ll still be quite unknown for a while.

“The main thing is we’re getting the laps down that we want to, and learning what we need to about our car.”

However, Lawson was also 0.389s off Lindblad’s fastest effort, where he managed to log 47 laps in the afternoon session, for a best time of 1m 18.451s.

Times in the afternoon are naturally faster due to what’s known as track evolution, where rubber from drivers’ tyres sticks to the surface and therefore makes it quicker to drive on with the extra grip.

Those times are to be taken with a grain of salt. Mercedes’ George Russell’s best time on day four, 1m 16.445s, was nearly five seconds slower than he qualified with at last year’s Spanish Grand Prix, on the same track.

Russell’s time was 0.636s faster than his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli (1m 17.081s) in second, and 1.778s faster than Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who was 1.778s back.

Aston Martin, who debuted their new AMR26, were the slowest, where Lance Stroll was close to 30 seconds off the pace, and only registered five laps before stopping on track and triggering a red flag.

Mercedes’ power unit is expected to be the best-performing engine to start the new season, after both they and Red Bull appear to have found a loophole in the new regulations, exploiting thermal expansion to surpass restrictions in the compression limits.

Red Bull, however, have not tested on days three or four, after Isack Hadjar damaged the team’s one car in Barcelona with a crash late on day two.

Team boss Laurent Mekies has said the team hopes to have it repaired to return by the end of the week, but now has just one day left of possible track time.

The official pre-season tests in Bahrain will be held over two stints from February 11 to 13, and 18 to 20.

Alex Powell is a sports journalist for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016.