Pre-season F1 testing is all about mapping the strengths and weaknesses of your car and getting a feel for a car’s adjustability for grip. At the same time, the more laps a driver can put on the car, the more data there is to comb through, and the more confident a team can be of the car’s durability.

In the first test days of the season, the engineers are centred on relative lap times on the available tyre compounds. Already in 2017, it seems Ferrari’s aero-gamble has given the Italians greater speed on slower compounds over rivals Mercedes.

On Tuesday, Valtteri Bottas’ Mercedes put in a best lap of 1m19.705s on the ultra-soft Pirellis during the morning session. During the afternoon, Sebastian Vettel countered with a lap just 0.247s slower while on the less-grippy soft-compound Pirellis. If this continues into full-length Grands Prix, look for Ferrari to put in longer faster stints on slower tires and then pick up even more time from Mercedes on the softer, faster option tires.

On the other end of the grid, McLaren-Honda is in the third season of their partnership, with McLaren spending two full seasons learning that Honda’s V6 hybrid turbo engine design was an abysmal failure. With the opportunity of a restart with new 2017 engine rules, both Honda and McLaren felt they had turned the corner on reliability and looked ready to take the fight to frontrunners, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari.

Unfortunately, engine reliability issues have hit McLaren again costing them the majority of the first two days of testing, thus leaving them woefully short on test mileage and already behind in sorting data to improve the all-new MCL32 on track. When the car is running, Fernando Alonso’s best times are three seconds behind Ferrari and Mercedes. Handling is also coming up short, with the car’s lack of grip making it far from stable. Time is already running short for a McLaren-Honda 2017 rejuvenation.