F1 Pre-Season testing has evolved a lot in the last few years, from private team-specific affairs to a standardized and televised event. There were times when teams like Ferrari and McLaren used to test their cars in private for several days at Fiorano, Mugello, or Silverstone. However, F1 and the FIA have ensured to regulate the testing mileage for all teams to ensure a level playing ground for all sides. The 2024 Pre-Season testing will also follow this regulated format over three days from February 21 to 23 in Bahrain.
These three days will be crucial for all ten teams to understand their new cars for the upcoming season. As mentioned earlier, it will provide equal opportunities to test, experiment, and verify the nuances of their new car concepts and even falter to find any potential mistakes.
How does F1 Pre-Season testing work?
Over the winter break since the end of last season, all teams must have made substantial changes to their cars. There are teams like Mercedes and Ferrari who are probably bringing brand-new concepts to the table for their 2024 challengers.
Therefore, Pre-Season testing will help them to test the new parts of their car concepts besides benchmarking where their performance and reliability lie relative to other teams. In 2023, Aston Martin got to know how they made significant progress over the previous year’s car. Meanwhile, McLaren and Alpine left Bahrain clueless about their performance potential.
Drivers like Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will get an idea of how their respective new machinery feels on all fronts, be it performance, reliability, handling, and tire degradation. The crucial question they would want to understand is whether they can fight for the 2024 championship or not.
Besides the main drivers, teams also give a chance to young junior drivers associated with them for a session or two. Last year, when Lance Stroll was suffering from an injury, Aston Martin fielded Felipe Drugovich in their car for pre-season testing.
Similar to Drugovich, this year drivers like Oliver Bearman, Theo Pourchaire, or Frederik Vesti may get a session or two if any drivers at Ferrari, Haas, Sauber, or Mercedes are not available to run due to any issue.
From the engineers’ perspective, it will be a busy time as they will have to collect data and verify it from what they have figured out in wind tunnels and simulators. It also gives the pit crews the option to practice pit stops, which many teams would ideally like to capitalize upon and eliminate any lapses for the race weekends.
Where is F1 Pre-Season testing happening in 2024?
Usually, Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya has been hosting pre-season testing for F1. However, in the last few years, the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain, has hosted testing. In 2024, F1 teams will arrive in Bahrain for three days of testing, beginning February 21.
According to F1’s official website, the testing sessions will begin at 10:00 local time in Sakhir and run till 19:00 local time. These sessions will be split by a 1-hour lunch break to make it two 4-hour sessions.
As for fans wanting to attend the testing event at the Sakhir circuit, they can only do so on days two and three. The first day of the 2024 pre-season testing will be a closed affair with no fans allowed to attend.
The reasoning behind this is F1 teams may not want any fans to witness their car suffering major breakdowns, as it is a step into the unknown even for them.
Will F1 Pre-Season testing be broadcast on TV?
Ideally, fans would want to see the new F1 cars in live-action before the season starts and would want to attend Pre-Season testing in Bahrain. It will certainly give fans to catch 16 additional hours of on-track F1 action.
However, not all big-name drivers and teams may be on track all the time, as the nature of testing goes. Reliability issues may certainly force teams to stay in garages.
So fans can watch Pre-season testing at leisure on TV. Respective broadcasters in various regions such as Sky Sports in the UK, ESPN in the US, and other territories often confirm if they will broadcast the three-day event in Bahrain.
As of now, the sport’s streaming platform, F1TV, will certainly stream all three days of pre-season testing like last year. With F1TV’s provisions of on-boards and data and telemetry available to individual users, fans can get to understand the teams, cars, and drivers in detail in a relaxed environment.
