Official Pre-Season Test Report

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: The conditions throughout the test were warm and breezy, with the wind changing direction late on day two. With the change of wind direction came a drop in temperature, which gave us an opportunity to test the car and the tyres in a useful range of conditions.

Inevitably, the test was extremely busy and after the damage done to the car early on day two, we had to make a few changes to the plan. Although frustrating to lose a lot of track time, we exposed an issue which we have now been able to fix, and we were able to complete 142 trouble free laps on the final day.

We have a lot to work through over the next few days before we run the cars again here in Bahrain, but we are in a good position as we head into the 2022 race season.

Nicholas Latifi: It was obviously not a fully ideal test, specifically with the issue we had on day two, but I think the team did a great job of coming together to make the most of day three. There was a lot of good teamwork from both the day and night crew to get the car repaired and all the engineers pulled together to put us in the best position to maximise day three. We did a lot of good work, learned a lot and did a lot of laps. That was good for me to try to make up the lost mileage from yesterday and now there’s a lot of data to go over to see how we can be in the best shape possible for the first race next week.

Alex Albon: Pre-season testing is now finished and next time we’re out on track it will finally be a race weekend! We got some good mileage in over the course of the test and I feel like we’ve ticked all our boxes, despite losing some time on Friday. In terms of the car’s performance, I think there’s some more to come from us and I’m excited to keep pushing next weekend and throughout the course of the season to get the most out of the FW44. Overall, it’s been a positive and incredibly valuable test and the team have done a great job, especially in some challenging circumstances.