Ferrari confirms plan to skip opening day of Barcelona shakedown

Ferrari is the latest team to confirm it will not be on track during the first day of pre-season testing in Barcelona.

Following on from McLaren’s confirmation that it will skip the first day of testing on Monday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Ferrari has revealed it plans a similar approach to the event.

Fred Vasseur confirms Ferrari plans for Barcelona test

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On Friday morning, Ferrari launched the new 2026 SF-26, whilst also carrying out a filming day event (limited to 200 kilometres) at its private Fiorano test track.

Both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc got the chance to get in their first taste of the car, but will have to wait until next week for a more in-depth savouring of the SF-26 as pre-season testing gets underway behind closed doors in Barcelona.

However, Ferrari has confirmed it will not take part on the first day of the five-day event.

With every team permitted to run on three of the scheduled five days, the approach each team takes will likely be quite different, with senior sources suggesting the most common approach may likely be a Monday-Wednesday-Friday split.

However, McLaren has already confirmed it will not take part in Monday’s track time, and now Ferrari has confirmed a similar approach.

Having launched the car in a basic ‘A-spec’, the focus initially will be on developing an understanding and validation of the new machine and its systems, allowing the Scuderia to prioritise on learning and establishing a baseline before any attention is given to performance.

“It’s the beginning of the season, the beginning of the test of the preparation of the season, and we know that the season will be quite long,” team boss Fred Vasseur told select media, including PlanetF1.com, following the SF-26 car launch.

“This is clear, but it’s a good start. Let’s be positive. Let’s enjoy the journey. Now we have to be focused on Barcelona.

“We will start the test on Tuesday, and then, with the regulations, we decide which dates we have to run – Thursday, we will also be on track.”

The confirmation comes just hours after Williams announced it will completely miss the Barcelona test, citing delays in the FW48’s programme.

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With Ferrari getting the chance to shake down its car before the test begins by way of its Fiorano outing, it joins Audi, Cadillac, Mercedes, Alpine, and Racing Bulls in that milestone, and Vasseur said he was pleased to have been rewarded with a successful filming day.

“I think we postponed, as much as we could, the demo day to have time to develop the car. But we knew the calendar from the beginning,” he said.

“It’s a long-term process that we decided to bring upgrades to the next session. But I think the most important thing at the beginning is the reliability.

“The most important [thing] is to be able to do mileage. That’s why we are quite happy today, because we didn’t have an issue.

“It’s a good step that in Barcelona, the target will be to get a maximum of information on the car, maximum of data, and then we start the development from Bahrain onwards.”

Ferrari’s chassis technical director, Loic Serra, said the team had evaluated numerous concepts and solutions in the development phase of the SF-26, before settling on what it feels is the optimal path, both in terms of establishing a strong baseline, whilst also having plenty of scope for upgrade potential.

“We tried to extend the conceptual phase because, effectively, when you have brand new regulations, you need to be able to go through the loops of development several times, as many as you can,” he said.

“At one stage, you have to settle down the solution and then make it happen. So, yeah, quite a big focus on the conceptual phase.

“We also had in mind to make sure that we know that with these developments, with these new regulations, car development will be a big topic during the season.

“So we need to make sure we’re not cornering ourselves in the design and that we have enough potential for the car development.”

With Vasseur having previously spoken about an expected high rate of development between the start of testing and the first race in Barcelona, Serra was asked about how vast this development might be.

“There will be evolution of the car, for sure,” he said.

“I mean, the development doesn’t just start with the beginning of the season. It will be there as well in winter testing; there will be some evolution, for sure.

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