There is still one month until the first official pre-season testing session for the 2022 Formula One season: this year we will once again have two 3-day sessions, with the first scheduled to take place at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona between February 23 and 26. However, fans will not be allowed to attend from the stands and no cameras will be able to record footage from the event, but we might already see some Formula 1 cars in action on different circuit track in the next few weeks.
But of course we are not talking about the highly-anticipated new generation of Formula 1 cars, given the fact that the rules do not allow teams to use them for private testing. Yet teams will be able to carry out private tests by taking last year’s cars on track, but not using the new Pirelli 18″ tyres. In this case, they will be considered previous cars, and will therefore not be limited by the TCC restrictions.
Unlike TCCs (Testing of Current Cars) and Promotional Events (PE), which are strongly restricted by the FIA, TPCs (Testing of Previous Cars) give teams the opportunity test with “cars which were designed and built in order to comply with the Formula One Technical Regulations of any of the three calendar years falling immediately prior to the calendar year preceding the Championship” and to “test” them freely.
As a results, the teams will not be allowed to use the new 18″ Pirelli compounds. Still, the chance to hit the track is always welcomed by the engineers and, especially, the drivers, who during winter can only spend time in the simulator and work on computations.
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We can therefore assume that last year’s cars will not be completely shelved this championship; in 2021, Scuderia Ferrari conducted a few TPCs and TCCs at the Italian side’s home circuit (Fiorano) and also at Imola, that were specifically useful for Carlos Sainz to accelerate his familiarisation process with the new Maranello technology. Not that Charles Leclerc, more versed in the ways of Scuderia Ferrari, had nothing better to do: the tests were useful for both drivers and provided several valuable extra training sessions, even though they were carried out on old cars which are no longer used by the team.
The past, however, never goes away entirely. Despite the Technical Revolution that will affect the 2022 cars, the Power Units (as well as other elements such as the gearbox) will remain more or less the same – except for evolutions of the same design or actual exceptions like Alpine, with the team late-switching to a “Split Turbo” philosophy on their new engine before the development freeze, which will lock power unit performance for 3 or more years. Having the opportunity to test an old engine – even pushing it to its limits – to find the development areas is therefore important for teams like Ferrari, which has been working on an evolution of the same project for more than two years, and has already recovered a good portion of the work on the 2021 Power Unit.
We should then expect the Maranello team to capitalize on this opportunity at their Fiorano circuit, returning the SF21 to the sapient hands of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
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