BARCELONA, 22 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Bahrain International Circuit hosts from this Thursday until Saturday the official pre-season test of the 2023 Formula 1 World Cup, in three days of intense tests in which the teams will present the new single-seaters, especially those teams that still have not revealed the new details and pieces, and it will begin to intuit what the new championship will be like.
Three rookie drivers, several seat changes, evolved or ‘revolutionized’ cars and innovations to the limit of the new regulations… All this can be seen throughout this test in Sakhir, in 25.5 effective hours of tests spread over three hectic days.
As is usual in official pre-season tests, the new cars will be seen on the track trying out an endless number of settings. There will be no shortage of fluorescent fluid paint to check the air flows, nor the aerodynamic grills that pursue the same objective. But all this already on the new chassis.
Some teams, such as Williams, Alfa Romeo or Mercedes, have not yet revealed the final design of their new cars. Other teams, such as Aston Martin or Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari (undoubtedly the ‘signing’ of the year after leaving Alpine) and Carlos Sainz, yes. But Bahrain will shed light on all the shadows prior to this test.
Undoubtedly, from what has been seen so far, the AMR23 that Fernando Alonso will drive in search, first, of his 33rd victory is what has caused the most talk, due to its complete revolution of a single-seater that, in a risky way and with innovations intelligent, strong commitment to take a leap forward and take advantage of the experience of the Spanish driver, twice champion.
As for the new Ferrari SF-23, it promises more than a revolution, an evolution from the car of the previous year, which only lacked more regularity and reliability to wrest the championship from Red Bull. With Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, the ‘scuderia’ wants to mark ground from Sakhir.
Everything indicates that Red Bull will continue to be the rival to beat, especially after the show given by the reigning champion, Max Verstappen, last year, with Carlos Pérez as his partner. Now, the RB19 -still without fully revealing- must confirm the forecasts and see if the rivals can approach him, surpass him or see him again from behind.
One of those rivals that, like Ferrari, wants to unseat Red Bull is Mercedes, which will repeat with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell as drivers and which, in the new W14, will return to the black that gave them such a good ‘feeling’ in the past. Those of Brackley have among their aerodynamic improvements a ‘zero sidepod’ design (without sidepods).
Logan Sargeant (Williams), Nyck de Vries (AlphaTauri) and Oscar Piastri (McLaren) will be the ‘rookies’ of 2023, and they will all start rolling in this test where the 10 cars on the grid will get as close as possible to their fine tunning.
Bahrain, the same circuit and scene of these tests, will host the start of the 2023 World Cup from March 3 to 5. Little margin for error and application of what is discovered in these three days. But, as always, the results of the tests will have to be ‘paused’ because many teams hide the real potential of the cars and there is always a mid-table driver who takes the opportunity to feast on fast laps. Of course, last year Max Verstappen and his Red Bull dominated the test and won the 2022 World Cup.