Teams set for final day of F1 2023 running

While the competitive action for 2023 has drawn to a close, one day of F1 track activity remains with the Abu Dhabi post-season test.

Teams will all field two cars, with a young driver (or drivers) taking the wheel on one side of the garage, and a more familiar face across the other.

In total, there will be eight hours of running, divided neatly in half with a stoppage for lunch in the early afternoon.

Running will then continue into the evening, concluding just after sunset.

What do teams get out of the test?

There are different intents from different parties.

The young driver aspect is designed to achieve several objectives.

Firstly, it helps bed in inexperienced drivers and allows them to sample the car. It gives them confidence and, where there’s a simulator programme in place, helps them correlate the real versus digital worlds.

But there is value for the teams too, as they assess the youngster and benchmark against a known quantity in the race driver.

Normally that would see the experienced driver conducting tyre testing on behalf of Pirelli, but with the tyres remaining the same for 2024, teams have greater freedom this year in running their own programme.

“Obviously, the tyres are staying the same next year, at least for the start of next year, and we have a good understanding as a team of the current tyres,” said Aston Martin’s Tom McCullough on the benefit of the day’s running.

“But it does allow you to try some more out there tests.

“It’s actually very hard in a race weekend environment to do big setup tests that affect the tyres because you have such little time, so we are planning to do some of those kinds of things.

“And obviously, with Felipe driving in the young driver car it allows us to, you know, to get him even better prepared for next year.”

It’s also an opportunity to evaluate recent developments, data from which can help inform the direction of next year’s car.

“We’ll do some setup work to try to understand how to maximise from the tyres for next year,” explained Jonathan Eddolls, the Italian squad’s head of trackside engineering.

“During the race weekend, it’s very hard with the number of tyres and the amount of runs that we have to do very scientific tests.

“So we’ve got a set of beliefs that we use go into every event, which the Abu Dhabi test is an opportunity to somehow, let’s say, cement those in a more controlled environment.”

What drivers are taking part in the test?