Aston Martin has confirmed it will start later during the shakedown ahead of the upcoming F1 season. The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya opens its doors from 26 to 30 January for a five-day private test. Participating teams may choose three days to put their new car through its paces. Aston Martin plans to run only on Thursday and Friday, thereby missing at least one of the three available test days.
The Formula 1 teams are gathering this week in Catalonia for a five-day shakedown behind closed doors, aimed at covering the first kilometres in the new cars built to the revised regulations. Each team can nominate three days between Monday and Friday. The official pre-season tests follow later in February in Bahrain and consist of two separate three-day sessions.
Aston Martin delayed
Aston Martin is not the only team to start late. Earlier it emerged that McLaren and Ferrari will skip the opening day on Monday. Williams is even completely absent from Barcelona because of delays building the FW48. At Aston Martin it has also been a race against the clock to get the new AMR26 ready in time; it was previously reported that running on Monday and Tuesday would not be feasible.
The Silverstone outfit has now confirmed that reporting. “The AMR26 will be in Barcelona later this week for the shakedown,” the team said in an official statement. “We plan to run on Thursday and Friday.” That means Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll will together have the AMR26 at their disposal for two days to gather the first data ahead of the new Formula 1 season.
