For cost reasons, the teams agreed to hold just a single three-day session in Bahrain in 2021, shared by their two drivers.
This put additional pressure on any teams that suffered mechanical problems during the test and lost the track, and made it difficult for drivers to settle into new teams, including McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo.
Ricciardo was asked to brush aside for teammate Lando Norris at last weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and finished sixth when Norris scored his second F1 podium. The Australian admitted that he “did not underestimate” the adjustment difficulties.
Seidl says that with F1’s radical rule change slated to come into play next year after the 2020 chassis was carried over to this year to help support the teams’ finances amid the pandemic, he can hopefully reach an agreement to address that Increase the number of test days.
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“I think there is no point in complaining about the day and a half of testing [per driver in 2020]because this was an agreement between all the teams to do just one test this year to save costs, “he said.
“So [there’s] It doesn’t make sense to go into it too much.
“We all hope that we will have more testing days again for next year, especially because we know we have completely new cars.”
Andreas Seidl, Team Principal, McLaren
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
Seidl also hopes that the two tests will be carried out at an interval in which the teams can analyze what they have learned from the first game. This actually reflects what McLaren has been trying to do with the current day of shooting this year.
The Woking outfit, which this year had the added challenge of switching from Renault to Mercedes, went to extra lengths to get their new car ready early.
It was able to squeeze into two days of Silverstone filming to help Ricciardo settle in and so the team had more time to respond to their new aggregate before the Bahrain test.
Seidl added, “From my point of view, or at least from McLaren’s point of view, it makes sense to run two tests with a good gap in between to be able to digest what we learned from the first test and also to respond with these brand new cars can. “
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