Neither Daniel Ricciardo nor Sebastian Vettel, however, will get a track up and running with their respective new teams, McLaren and Aston Martin, before the launch of their 2021 cars.
As the upcoming post-season test in Abu Dhabi is limited to beginners, there is no way for drivers who change teams to drive current cars on the track.
Only three days of official pre-season testing are planned for next year, to be shared by two drivers. As a result, those who have changed bearings have limited opportunity to drive kilometers before the first race.
The rules allow unrestricted use of two-year-old cars, however, which is why Fernando Alonso was recently busy earning miles behind the wheel of a 2018 Renault on various tracks before heading for the renamed Alpine outfit next year.
Ferrari also has a suitable car for 2018 and will make it available to Sainz once he is contractually released from his McLaren commitments in January.
However, McLaren does not have the option of driving a 2018 Renault model for Ricciardo, while Racing Point does not have a car available for Vettel.
“Certainly a day and a half is very short, it is very little time,” said Binotto. “Obviously we’re trying to organize something for Carlos to make sure he can accelerate his integration into the team, into the engineers, into the car, into the way we work and into our processes.
“The simulator will be important in this regard – with the simulator he can work with his racing team, his engineers, his technicians.
“We are currently trying to organize sometime in January to drive an old car to ensure that it mainly gets used to our team and our procedures again and knows the people.”
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McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl said the team couldn’t use an MCL33 for Ricciardo as it would switch to Mercedes power next year.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have this option at the moment when it comes to driving an old car,” said the German. “We are not prepared for this because of the recent changes to the powertrains at McLaren.
“Ultimately, we have certain resources on the team that are limited at some point and we just have to decide how to use those resources for the maximum outcome in terms of outcomes.
“And we clearly made a decision that investing in something like this was less of a priority than other things. And so we ended up at the position we are currently in. “
Seidl emphasized that a lot can be achieved with the team’s new driver even without a distance run.
“I’m working with all departments on the plan,” he said. “The technical side, but also the communication and marketing side, in order to integrate Daniel as quickly as possible from January 1st.
“I think we have a good plan for how we’re going to do this. Of course, having only three days is a challenge [of testing].
“But these are the rules as they are. So I don’t waste energy thinking about how bad this is, it’s the challenge we are in. And we just have to keep going.
“Daniel is a very experienced driver. We have a lot of experienced people on the team. And we approach it with a lot of positivity. I’m sure we’ll be in good shape when we go to the first race next year. “
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