Ferrari paces final F1 practice, but Mercedes closes the gap at Barcelona

Ferrari concluded Formula 1 preseason testing narrowly on top of Mercedes as the Silver Arrows finally showed their familiar form in the closing session.  

Sebastian Vettel was on driving duty for Ferrari on the final day of action before the season gets underway in Australia. The four-time champion's 1:16.221 was the fastest ever seen in preseason testing at the Circuit de Barcelona.

Despite Mercedes holding back on lighting up the time sheets throughout the test, Friday saw Lewis Hamilton end the session just 0.003 behind Vettel with teammate Valtteri Bottas a few tenths further back in third.

Before strapping in for the afternoon session, Hamilton told the media he thinks Ferrari has an advantage of around half a second to the champions but on the evidence of Friday, things could be closer than he had anticipated.

"I think the gap is potentially half a second," said Hamilton. "Ferrari are the fastest. This is going to be the toughest battle yet. Ferrari’s pace is very, very good at the moment. The challenge is going to be harder than ever."

Hamilton went on to remind everyone not to read too deeply into the times and doubled down on his opinion that the gap to Ferrari is significant.

"Testing is testing," he said. "There's no reward for being quick in testing. We don't know because everyone has different engine modes and fuel loads. It will be four races before we really know where we stand.

"We could (catch Ferrari) and (the gap) could be bigger, we could get there and it could be less. There's no way looking at the GPS to say what fuel load we're on and what engine mode they're on. They're faster on the straights than us, for example.

"Of course, we hope it's not bigger than we might see now, and we hope that it's better. But we can't bank on that, so we've just got to work towards closing that gap that we think might be there."

The final times from testing can be viewed below.