Ferrari believes teams will have to show their true pace in Bahrain testing. Ferrari believes teams will have to show their true pace in Bahrain testing.

Formula 1 has entered a new era with completely different rules. This means that the first pre-season testing session, which took place last month at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona was more about understanding the new car and collecting important data and less about pushing the cars to the limit.

At the same time, the Barcelona testing session was marked by the porpoising issues which all teams encountered at the Circuit de Catalunya and made it difficult to identify the ideal set-up. After two more weeks of development work, teams are now ready for the final three-day test at Bahrain, which begins tomorrow and will be the last opportunity to test the new challengers on Thursday, being the final chance to run the cars before the first race of the 2022 Formula 1 season next week. As a result, teams and drivers will want to understand exactly where they stand at maximum performance.

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Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto feels the conservative approach that all teams seemed to take at the Circuit de Catalunya, of running with heavy fuel loads and focusing on setup analysis, would not be the best way to run things in the second pre-season testing session:

“Certainly I think that in Barcelona, at the first session, the idea was to collect data and try to understand the correlation. But when we go to Bahrain, and then it will be very close to the first race of the season, we will all I believe, try to simulate some race simulations, and quali simulations. We will want try to extract the most of the performance from the car itself. So certainly, in Bahrain, I think the relative competitiveness of the teams will become more clear.” – the Ferrari boss explaned.

The focus on the relative performance of the cars will also be ramped up with some teams expected to bring their race one upgrades to the test. A lot of attention appears to be focused on what Mercedes is going to look like, given the rumors it could reveal some dramatic aero updates to its W13 for this testing session.