With the drivers signed and the new cars unveiled, the 2015 Formula One World Championship is just about ready to get underway with the season-opening Australian Grand Prix next month. But before it does, we got our first chance to see how the competition is shaping up when the teams gathered in Jerez, Spain, over the past few days for the first official test session of the season.

Looking at the lap times alone, it would seem that Ferrari is in the best form for the test session. In his first outing in scarlet, four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel topped the time sheets on both the first two days, putting in a hot lap that was nearly a full second ahead of the next closest car and stood as the fastest time achieved by anyone all week. Kimi Raikkonen took over on the third day, clocking the second fastest time of the day as well, and clocked not only the fastest time of the day, but the fastest of the entire four-day session.

Arguably even more impressive, though, was Sauber, which typically languishes in the middle or at the back of the field, but performed like a front-runner during the test session: Marcus Ericsson clocked the second fastest time on both the first and fourth days. His rookie teammate Felipe Nasr did the same on the second second day, but topped the leaderboards on day three.

The returning champions at Mercedes, however, clearly took a different strategy that focused on endurance and reliability instead of hot laps. Nico Rosberg reeled in 157 laps on the first day (two or three times as much as any other team) and 151 laps on day three, while Lewis Hamilton racked up 91 on day two and another 117 on day three. Even while it focused on going the distance, though, the German team still managed to land in the top half of the time sheets on each day.