Fernando Alonso is baffled as to why Formula 1 has not only limited the teams to three days of testing, but also one car even though they’ll have the parts for two given the season begins a week later.
Pre-season testing begins at the Sakhir circuit on Wednesday, and like last year it’s a mere three-day outing.
That means each of the team’s two drivers gets one full day in the car and they have to share the other, or split the three between the morning and afternoon session. Either way it equates to just one and a half days in the car.
Alonso says that’s not ideal with the Aston Martin driver questioning how in the huge-money world of Formula 1, the sport’s bosses believe three days is enough time to prepare for a new season.
“We have a very limited testing in Bahrain, which is, and by the way I can say it now because I’ve been thinking all winter about this, how unfair is [it] that we have one day and a half to prepare a World Championship,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com.
“There’s no other sport in the world with all the money involved, and with all the marketing and the good things that we say about Formula 1, and being closer and closer to the fans, I cannot understand why we then go to Bahrain for four days, which could be two and two for [each of] the drivers.
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“If you go to three, which is not even… which is an odd number, you cannot divide [fairly] between the drivers.
“And I don’t know why we don’t go with two cars because we are already in Bahrain and we’re racing the following week.”
This year’s pre-season test will be held from 21-23 February with a five-day break before the first practice session of the championship gets underway on Thursday 29 February.
Formula 1 cut back on pre-season testing in 2020 with the team bosses agreeing to the trade-off as the calendar increased to 22 Grands Prix. That year the traditional in-season tests were also dropped.
Testing was reduced from eight days pre-season and four days of in-season action to just six days overall, with that again slashed last year leaving the teams with just three days of running.
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