There shall be as many as six rookies taking to the observe on Friday within the FP1 session that may open the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend. For Dino Beganovic, a driver from the Ferrari Driver Academy, will probably be his absolute debut in a race weekend on the wheel of a Components 1 automotive, and he’ll achieve this in Charles Leclerc’s automotive. As for the others, the names are already identified: Ayumu Iwasa (Crimson Bull), Frederik Vesti (Mercedes), Felipe Drugovich (Aston Martin), Ryo Hirakawa (Haas), and Luke Browning (Williams).
Beginning this season, the FIA has elevated from two to 4 the variety of Friday morning classes that every workforce should allocate to a ‘rookie’, that means a younger driver who has by no means raced in Components 1. There’s an exception for individuals who have taken half in a most of two Grands Prix, however for essentially the most half, these are drivers nonetheless competing within the feeder collection and a part of junior applications of the varied groups.
The doubling of the classes devoted to rookies has pressured groups to plan effectively prematurely which weekends they should ask one among their two common drivers to tackle the function of spectator. And regardless of the calendar that includes as many as 24 rounds, the variety of weekends appropriate for placing a rookie on observe will not be really that top.
The primary weekends to be dominated out are clearly the six with the dash format, as they embrace just one free follow session. Then come the primary two GPs of the season, weekends throughout which the common drivers are nonetheless searching for the most effective feeling with the brand new vehicles.
Then it’s the flip of the road circuits. It’s very uncommon for a workforce to take a daily driver out of a free follow session the place feeling with the observe is essential for efficiency. On weekends like Jeddah, Miami, Monaco, Montreal, Baku, Singapore, and Las Vegas, complaints wouldn’t be missing if a workforce requested one among its common drivers to surrender a free follow session. That leaves 9 weekends, however a workforce tends to exclude these weekends the place new improve packages are scheduled to debut or when there are technical novelties generally.
It’s no shock, then, that there are six rookies in Bahrain. The Sakhir observe hosted pre-season testing and, though the vehicles have been doing their first kilometres, all common drivers had the prospect to place in lots of laps. The setup work required throughout the race weekend shall be much less in depth than common (groups have already got numerous information obtainable), and even these bringing technical upgrades to the observe may have extra time than common to guage them.
With the Bahrain weekend, all groups may have carried out at the very least one rookie take a look at aside from McLaren, which is suspending its rookie outings to the European season. Mercedes, Racing Bulls, and Sauber have already accomplished two rookie classes by exploiting a loophole within the sporting rules that may seemingly be corrected for subsequent season. Within the Melbourne and Shanghai weekends, Antonelli, Hadjar, and Bortoleto have been, in all respects, rookies, not having but competed in two Grands Prix, so their respective groups declared the FP1 classes as rookie exams.
Curiously, Alpine didn’t do the identical, although in Melbourne it might have recorded Jack Doohan’s FP1 session as a rookie take a look at (Jack has solely raced in a single Grand Prix in 2024), in all probability to go away room for the big group of drivers below contract with the workforce.
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