There will likely 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 will likely be his absolute debut in a race weekend on the wheel of a System 1 automotive, and he’ll achieve this in Charles Leclerc’s automotive. As for the others, the names are already identified: Ayumu Iwasa (Pink 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 periods that every group should allocate to a ‘rookie’, that means a younger driver who has by no means raced in System 1. There may be an exception for individuals who have taken half in a most of two Grands Prix, however for probably the most half, these are drivers nonetheless competing within the feeder collection and a part of junior applications of the assorted groups.
The doubling of the periods devoted to rookies has pressured groups to plan effectively upfront which weekends they must ask considered one of 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 isn’t truly that prime.
The primary weekends to be dominated out are clearly the six with the dash format, as they embody just one free observe session. Then come the primary two GPs of the season, weekends throughout which the common drivers are nonetheless in search of the very best feeling with the brand new automobiles.
Then it’s the flip of the road circuits. It’s very uncommon for a group to take a daily driver out of a free observe 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 group requested considered one of its common drivers to surrender a free observe session. That leaves 9 weekends, however a group 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 will likely be much less in depth than traditional (groups have already got quite a lot of information obtainable), and even these bringing technical upgrades to the observe can have extra time than traditional to guage them.
With the Bahrain weekend, all groups can 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 periods by exploiting a loophole within the sporting laws that can seemingly 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 periods as rookie checks.
Curiously, Alpine didn’t do the identical, though 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 massive group of drivers beneath contract with the group.
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