Mercedes drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli end Barcelona shakedown on a high, posting a best time over a second quicker than closest rival.

In the morning Antonelli posted the quickest time of the week, however, taking over after the lunchbreak, teammate Russell went on to post the first sub 1:16 lap of the shakedown.

While we continue to remind readers not to read too much into the times at this stage, other than the obvious 'out of the box' pace, the fact that between them the pair completed 168 laps is what should really worry the German team's rivals.

"I think it was a pretty good shakedown," Antonelli told F1TV. "We did a lot of laps, 90 today, so really good mileage for the team.

"I'm happy because I've been learning quite a lot about the car, and just looking forward to being back in Bahrain," he added.

"We kept it very similar to yesterday," he replied, when asked if the team had carried out qualifying simulations as well as race sims, "because the main goal was still to do long running, so definitely we tried different modes just to have a better understanding of the battery and how it behaves.

"Today was a bit more focused on soft tyres, also long running with soft tyres, just to see how the car was responding and especially how the power unit was responding with the high speed into the corners. It was very interesting."

Asked about confidence within the team ahead of Bahrain, he said: "We go there with high confidence and high hopes because, definitely, it's been good. Obviously, we had our issues during the shakedown, but we were able to fix them and now we can be sure that in Bahrain we can more or less hit the ground running there as well.

"So definitely, we will go there with a better understanding of the car."

Like Mercedes, Ferrari had both its drivers in action, Lewis Hamilton in the morning and Charles Leclerc in the afternoon.

The Briton was delighted to finally get some dry running.

"It was nice to get out in the dry and do some running, because obviously our first day was in the miserable wet weather," said the seven-time world champion. "So, it was great to be able to get some running and understand the tyres.

"We did the C2 and the C1," he revealed, "it was so cold that the tyres are not really working so much. But we got through our programme and a bit of an understanding of where the car is at and where we need to improve."

Asked if he feels where he hoped to be at this point, he replied: "When you come to the test, you always want to get a lot of mileage. Today, I did 85 laps in the morning, which is amazing. That's really down to all the people in the factory who have done such a great job to make sure that the car, so far, is really reliable.

"Last year we had a worst start to testing. So, considering this is a completely new band of rules, it's better than we've experienced in the past, so I'm really hopeful that continues."

Though fourth on the timesheets, Oscar Piastri, getting his first taste of the MCL40, was sidelined for much of the afternoon with a fuel system issue.

Nonetheless, the Australian's first impressions were good.

"There's a lot of challenges this year up and down the grid, so it was good to get stuck in. We had a fuel system issue, which cut our day short, but the team's working hard to get that fixed and back out tomorrow.

"These cars are completely different to what we've had the last few years," he added. "That's part of what this test is about. We've already identified a few things that we can try to improve on the car to make it feel a bit nicer. We have one more day of running tomorrow.

"We'll continue to get used to the car and get a good read on how different things feel. Then we'll find a good direction to make the car quicker and feel nicer."

Another team running both its drivers was Racing Bulls, Liam Lawson driving the morning session and Arvid Lindblad in the afternoon. The pair completed 111 laps on their way to finishing fifth and seventh quickest.

"We just keep learning," said the kiwi. "We are obviously making big gains but so is everybody else.

"(They're) very, very different cars," he continued, "but 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.

"In terms of mileage, we have honestly had a pretty strong test in term of reliability, so that's been a box ticked. In terms of expectations, it's very hard to know, we don't know where anybody else is. That will still be unknown for a while, but the main thing is we're getting the laps down that we want to and learning what we need to about our car."

Sergio Perez completed 66 laps in the Cadillac, the American outfit continuing its low-key approach.

After much speculation throughout the day, the much-anticipated, Adrian Newey designed, Aston Martin (pictured) headed out just under an hour before close of play. Unfortunately, Lance Stroll was only able to complete four laps before stopping on track and bringing the session to an early close.

Ferrari should be back in action tomorrow for the final day, as should Red Bull, with McLaren, Alpine, Audi, Aston Martin, Haas and Cadillac also set to run.

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