Updates on Formula 1’s plans for 2022 pre-season testing. Updates on F1's plans for 2022 pre-season testing.

The Barcelona session ‘dedicated’ to print and online media, the one in Bahrain instead will have a big presentations and complete tv coverage: this is Liberty Media’s plan in view of the two winter testing sessions scheduled ahead of the 2022 Formula 1 season, in Barcelona from 23 to 25 February and in Bahrain from 11 to 13 March. Between the two winter testing sessions there will be two weeks in which the teams will have time to metabolize the ideas of others and possibly introduce them on their cars if the projects are not diametrically opposed.

Furthermore, it is not certain that all the teams will decide to reveal their key elements at Montmelò, even if each kilometer covered in the final configuration will be very important in view of a season which will be marked by a revolution “that has not been seen since 1982” quoting Adrian Newey. Andreas Seidl, McLaren team principal, is convinced that each team will have its own characteristics, especially in terms of the concept for the front wing and nose. Seidl expects concepts that are distant from the prototype presented by Liberty Media at Silverstone and great differences between one team and another.

To generate maximum curiosity and better manage the advent of the championship with completely renewed single-seaters, according to the German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, Liberty Media intends to limit the circulation of video images and television footage during the three Barcelona days. The first winter test session would thus see print media and online newspapers put at the center of attention as regards media coverage. With this plan, F1 makes sure that the media and fan attention for the second test will remain as high. The goal is to preserve Bahrain, where official presentations and maximum television coverage of the three-day test are expected. Bahrain, in fact, paid considerable amounts of money in order to be able to host the tests and the first act of the championship as happened in the current Formula 1 season. If everything would already be revealed in Barcelona, ​​the investment of money would not be justified by the media ‘return’.