On the face of it, Mercedes has - as feared - picked up where it left off in Abu Dhabi, with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas dominating proceedings from the outset of pre-season testing. However, though the German team's pace and reliability was as impressive as ever, there were interesting things going on elsewhere. With the Silver Arrows dominating from the outset, at least the tedious notion of sandbagging can be put to bed before we start, for clearly neither driver or team was pulling its punches today. However, just along the pitlane, Max Verstappen completed a very impressive 168 laps - just 5 shy of Mercedes total - on his way to posting the fourth best time of the day. Granted,...
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