Otmar Szafnauer Corrects Franz Tost objection claiming “three days was appropriate for this year” at Bahrain

As the preseason testing session for 2021 concluded last weekend in Bahrain, most of the Formula 1 teams have called out for an extended pre-season session. The demand surfaced due to the recent technical changes in the F1. Otmar Szafnauer, head of Aston Martin, however, wants to go nice and easy about the entire situation.

“As Franz said, next year we will have a new car and that should have an impact on where and how much we will test next year,” said the manager of the British F1 team.

“I think three days was appropriate for this year with what happened in 2020 with the pandemic, and the reduction in car development for this year.”

The statement came in after Franz Tost, team leader of Alpha Tauri, objected to the number of days involved in pre-season testing sessions.

“Next year we will have a completely new car. I don’t think three days are enough, “says the team leader of AlphaTauri, Franz Tost, during the days in Sakhir.

“But we have to find a good balance between the number of days and the costs because 2022 will not be a very cheap year. Therefore, we have to take all the factors into consideration ”.

We must mention here that every team agreed to this three preseason days system in 2021. Given the system, each driver got a day and a half to get himself ready for the race day on March 28. Few of the teams allocated a day between their two drivers, while others permitted every driver to have at least one full day for best preparation.

Otmar believes that teams need to sit and talk on this issue

The Aston Martin team’s head thinks that this issue doesn’t require an immediate reaction. He further believes that a detailed analysis of the testing session is required before coming to any conclusion.

“We will see, we will sit down together and discuss this issue. It is always positive to try in Bahrain or Abu Dhabi, and I think that on Friday morning and Saturday morning we had reasonably good conditions, but yesterday afternoon they were quite bad ”.

The pre-season testing session came up as a big surprise for many. Despite going for the traditional  Barcelona circuit, F1 opted for Bahrain as a more feasible destination.  Discussing the Barcelona circuit brings upon a perfect layout allows that facilitates the teams to scrutinize every aspect of a new car. Still, given to the harsh climate conditions in Spain at the end of February and the beginning of March, the F1 authorities thought of going otherwise.

The overall situation, however, allowed the Sakhir circuit to host these testing sessions. Although the teams and drivers have to tackle the sand storm situation, they are largely happy and further looking to repeat it in 2022.

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