Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Three days testing at Bahrain was the only proper running teams got with Formula 2’s new car before racing it, so next month’s in-season test will be valuable.
After three rounds of racing in March, drivers have four weeks off before testing at Barcelona on April 23-25. There is then another three weeks before round four at Imola.
With technical freedoms and track time in testing less restrictive than race weekends, drivers believe there will be a large scope for improvement from their days on track. Campos Racing’s Isack Hadjar has called it “the three most important days of the year”.
“It’s where you get to test things you cannot on race weekends,” he said. “So it’s really important, and then we will be analysing everything [soon] before making what we want to try in Barcelona.”
Hitech GP’s Paul Aron labeled April’s track action as “the most crucial three days of testing that F2 has ever seen”.
“It’s a new car, it’s still the beginning of the championship, and I said before the first round that I think the real championship starts after Barcelona test. Because coming from Bahrain, there’s not much time to test items, what you have in the first round is what you go with,” Aron explained.
“I think really where changes are starting to be made and maybe philosophies of the car are going to be changed is the Barcelona test. And surely each of the teams have some items in mind, everybody knows their weaknesses and strengths now, we have had three tracks which are completely different. So the Barcelona test will be really important and there will actually be a lot of testing rather than just running and driving and getting experience. Then it will be very interesting to see how everything is mixed up in Imola.”
Rodin Motorsport’s Zane Maloney feels sure “teams are going to learn a lot” in testing.
“You come into the race weekend with your package, and you leave the race weekend with the same package a little bit different. But we can actually properly make changes in Barcelona. From my side, it’s about being on it every single time I jump in the car. In a race run, a qualifying run, it doesn’t matter [what]. And from the team’s side, it will be about not testing everything, just finding what we think we are struggling with and what we can work on, and testing that.
“Three days feels like a long time, but in racing and what we have to be doing, it’s really nothing.”
FIA Formula 3 teams test at Barcelona on April 16-18, and Prema’s Dino Beganovic and Gabriele Mini cannot wait.
“We have a few things we would like to test,” said Beganovic. “I can’t tell you what, but it will be interesting to see.”
“We will try many things in testing. As a driver, I know the things I can fix on specific tracks, and I will try to improve on those three days,” added Mini.