Sergio Perez has offered his opinion on one of the most pressing issues in the F1 paddock ahead of pre-season testing in Bahrain.
Sergio Perez believes that there is ‘no time’ in the calendar for F1 to squeeze in more pre-season testing with a record-breaking 24-race schedule planned for the upcoming campaign. These comments followed Fernando Alonso’s calls for greater amounts of track time for drivers ahead of the season opener in Bahrain.
Under the current regulations, all teams are given three days of track time at the Sakhir International Circuit with this allocation divided up between the two drivers. This means that teams can only have one car on track at any given time.
This has been a source of frustration for Alonso, who said: “We have a very limited testing in Bahrain. I’ve been thinking all winter about this, how unfair it is that we only have one day and a half to prepare [for] a World Championship.
“There is no other sport in the world, with all the money involved and with all the marketing and the good things that we say about Formula 1 and being closer and closer to the fans. I cannot understand why we then go to Bahrain for four days, which could be two and two for the drivers.
If you go to three, which is not even, which is an odd number, you cannot divide between the drivers. And I don’t know why we don’t go with two cars. Because we are already in Bahrain and we race the following week.”
However, Perez does not believe that it would be possible to accommodate such a request with the Mexican driver already concerned about the packed nature of the current F1 calendar.
There’s no time,” he explained. “We have 24 races. The calendar is already brutal, so there’s no time for more testing. It’s too many. We know that it’s too many races. It’s going to be a brutal calendar for all of us involved in the sport.
That’s why it’s important that we are able to manage our energy levels as best as possible. I think 20 races would be great, keeping up the quality instead of the quantity. But that’s not for me to decide.”
The 24-race schedule for the upcoming season will break the record for the most congested in F1 history, building on the 22-race renewal in 2023, which matched the existing record and left drivers and team personnel visibly exhausted at the season finale in Abu Dhabi.
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