Formula 1 teams are discussing plans to prevent an all-out testing war in 2025 by limiting running of recent ground-effect cars, Motorsport.com has learned.
With the F1 grid getting more and more competitive, and nailing mechanical set-ups proving to be the key to maximising performance on race weekends, teams have quickly realised the benefits that can be had from running recent cars.
Under F1’s current testing regulations, teams can test for an unrestricted number of days with what are officially known as ‘Previous Cars.’
These are classified as complying with the “technical regulations of any of the three calendar years falling immediately prior to the calendar year preceding the year of the championship.”
For 2024, this means that teams have been able to run with their 2022 challengers – which was the first year of the latest ground-effect generation so has relevance to the current machinery.
Some teams are using the Previous Car testing to help prepare young drivers, with Mercedes for example having given valuable mileage to Andrea Kimi Antonelli in its 2022 W13 this year.
Others have, however, used the opportunity to run their 2022 cars for wider gains – with Red Bull in particular running Max Verstappen at Imola in its RB18 ahead of this year’s Spanish Grand Prix to help increase its mechanical understanding of the kerb-riding problems it has endured.
The potential development opportunities that such running offers alerted rival teams, and Motorsport.com has learned that the topic came up during the most recent Formula 1 Commission meeting prior to the summer break.
Amid what is understood to have been a warning that some teams were considering expanding their Previous Car running to run full test programmes with bespoke personnel for 2025, moves are being made to introduce a series of rules to limit what is allowed.
Those talks are now ongoing between the teams and the FIA at Sporting Advisory Committee level, with it likely that several key elements will be added to next year's regulations.
While no final decision has been taken, elements that are being debated are a ban on any running at tracks coming up on the calendar for 60 days prior to them taking place, a restriction to just four days of running (or 1000 kilometres total) for drivers competing in the current championship, with a potential likely limit of 20 days in total allowed for TPC tests for the season.
The talks at the SAC should finalise the rules over the next few weeks prior to them being put to the F1 Commission for approval later this year.
Speaking in the wake of Verstappen’s Imola test in the RB18 earlier this year, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur felt that moves needed to be made to split up running of previous cars to help young drivers get experience and tests to add development knowledge.
“You can differentiate the TPCs (Testing of Previous Cars) you do with your racing drivers because this, for me, it is more development than something else when you do a TPC one week before a race,” he said.
“I am not complaining about them [Red Bull]. It is by the regulation, and it is completely OK, but it is more development than something else.
“If we have to police it, we will have to split the two aspects: the days we are doing with our drivers and the days we are doing with our non-racing drivers."
One avenue that is already shut off by the regulations is for teams to run development parts in the TPC tests.
The current rules states: “No test parts, sensors, instrumentation, test software, component changes, operational tests or procedural tests will be permitted which give any sort of information to the Competitor that is related to cars of the current Championship or cars complying with TCC.”
However, set-up changes are free – which can prove valuable with the current cars often proving to operate in a narrow performance window, so any help in understanding track requirements can be a benefit.
