There might be as many as six rookies taking to the observe on Friday within the FP1 session that can open the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend. For Dino Beganovic, a driver from the Ferrari Driver Academy, it is going to be his absolute debut in a race weekend on the wheel of a Method 1 automobile, and he’ll achieve this in Charles Leclerc’s automobile. As for the others, the names are already identified: Ayumu Iwasa (Purple 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 staff should allocate to a ‘rookie’, which means a younger driver who has by no means raced in Method 1. There may be an exception for many 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 packages of the assorted groups.
The doubling of the classes devoted to rookies has compelled groups to plan properly prematurely which weekends they must ask considered one of their two common drivers to tackle the position 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 just isn’t really that top.
The primary weekends to be dominated out are clearly the six with the dash format, as they embrace just one free apply session. Then come the primary two GPs of the season, weekends throughout which the common drivers are nonetheless in search of the perfect feeling with the brand new automobiles.
Then it’s the flip of the road circuits. It’s very uncommon for a staff to take an everyday driver out of a free apply 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 staff requested considered one of its common drivers to surrender a free apply session. That leaves 9 weekends, however a staff tends to exclude these weekends the place new improve packages are scheduled to debut or when there are technical novelties typically.
It’s no shock, then, that there are six rookies in Bahrain. The Sakhir observe hosted pre-season testing and, though the automobiles had been doing their first kilometres, all common drivers had the prospect to place in lots of laps. The setup work required through the race weekend might be much less intensive than normal (groups have already got quite a lot of information obtainable), and even these bringing technical upgrades to the observe can have extra time than normal to judge them.
With the Bahrain weekend, all groups can have carried out at the least one rookie check apart 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 laws that can probably be corrected for subsequent season. Within the Melbourne and Shanghai weekends, Antonelli, Hadjar, and Bortoleto had 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, regardless that in Melbourne it may have recorded Jack Doohan’s FP1 session as a rookie check (Jack has solely raced in a single Grand Prix in 2024), most likely to go away room for the massive group of drivers below contract with the staff.
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