Haas is finally launching the 2021 F1 car ahead of testing in Bahrain

Teams typically run their new cars’ engines at the factory at the earliest opportunity to check their systems before an initial shakedown run.

However, Haas was unable to start the engine at its Banbury base because the Ferrari engineers required for the job were unable to travel to the UK.

They should have been quarantined on arrival and on their return to Italy and that was not considered practical.

For the same reason, the team has not held a day of filming or shakedown in the UK and will instead be making the car its first few laps when official pre-season testing begins on Friday morning in Bahrain.

Team boss Günther Steiner announced last month that the starting shot would be postponed to Sakhir, but also insisted that this would not be a big problem as so much of the car was carried over from 2021 – although the engine itself had major changes.

“The fire will be in Bahrain,” Steiner told Motorsport.com. “Anyway, with all the flyaway races, the engines go back to Maranello and then they come back to the circuit and go straight into the car. So it’s nothing new.

“But it’s not ideal because even if it’s a carry-over car, there are still some new parts. You want to do as much as possible at home.

“If you can’t, you have to find ways, but I think we’ll be fine. As long as it sounds good when you switch it on for the first time, that’s no problem! “

The team tweeted a video today suggesting the fire was going according to plan.

Haas wasn’t the only team affected by UK travel restrictions. Renault engineers who had traveled from France for Alpine’s first firing and the subsequent shakedown in Silverstone had to be quarantined first.

Honda’s British AlphaTauri engineers flew to Italy for a test with Yuki Tsunoda in an old Toro Rosso at the beginning of January and then stayed on site for several weeks to take care of the ATR02 factory fire and the day of shooting in Imola in Im at the end of February.

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