10 things to look out for as F1 testing 2024 kicks off

And, just like that, another Formula 1 season is upon us – kicking off with this week’s three-day pre-season test at the Bahrain International Circuit.

If it doesn’t seem like 86 days have passed since Max Verstappen triumphed in the 2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – clocking up over 1,000 laps led in that crushingly dominant campaign to boot – that’ll be because of the sheer number of news stories keeping fans and columnists occupied this winter.

First, there was the shock news in mid-January that Guenther Steiner would not be returning as Haas team principal – presumably causing a hasty re-write of an upcoming episode or 10 of Drive to Survive.

Then, Lewis Hamilton’s decision to abandon his long-term F1 home at Mercedes and live the wonderfully romantic and exciting Ferrari dream that has been both boom and bust for many of his fellow world champions lit up interest levels in a championship that had been getting ever staler with every Red Bull victory waltz.

PLUS: The contrasting fortunes of F1's big-name moves to Ferrari

Car launch season soon swept by – the underwhelming first week of mostly carbon fibre liveries replaced by the colourful big hitters in the second. Red Bull then capped it all with a surprise major design change coming for its RB20 machine.

Those stories all set the scene for the new season. But here we present the pick of the themes to watch out for as that intriguing base evolves and the year’s knowledge of just how the new cars will perform starts to grow in 2024 testing.

1. Horner investigation latest news

The internal investigation into Horner has yet to reach its conclusion, meaning the team remains in flux

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The third major story of the off-season just gone unfurled just as launch season started. That Red Bull team boss Christian Horner is facing an internal investigation over unspecified allegations made against him by a female employee.

Horner made his first public appearance since then when his team ploughed on with unchanged plans for the RB20’s launch. Given the seriousness of the allegations facing Horner – which he denies – with each passing day and further developments coming from the Dutch media it is shocking that Red Bull has not suspended him pending the investigation’s outcome.

PLUS: How the Horner investigation eclipsed Red Bull’s 2024 F1 launch

As testing approaches, with Horner set to face a media grilling on Thursday where Red Bull can’t restrict questioning lines as it did at its launch, he is expected to appear as normal.

But statements from Formula One Management and the FIA, in particular the former hoping for a swift conclusion to the case, amped up the pressure for this situation to be resolved as soon as possible.

Watch out for more news breaking in the coming days, as the Red Bull squad also wants things wrapped up before the season fully starts.

2. How Red Bull’s ‘zeropod’ plan evolves

The new Red Bull RB20 features distinctive Mercedes-like traits

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The RB20’s new shape around the upper aerodynamic surfaces on its flanks had been visible in the spy shots that emerged from its Silverstone shakedown a week ago. But when the car was revealed at the team’s factory launch two days later, the watching crowd were in for a shock.

The RB20’s long, sculpted cooling gulley cannons were not the only Mercedes-like design feature, with the launch car apparently featuring vertical sidepod inlets and suggesting Red Bull is set to switch to the ‘zeropod’ concept its rival couldn’t get to work in 2022 or early in 2023.

Autosport has since revealed that the team plans to switch to sidepods that indeed take Red Bull down this design path, which has higher theoretical peak downforce potential than the downwash sidepod concept it pioneered.

But Red Bull only plans to do so from the Japanese GP onwards amid cooler conditions than are set to be encountered in Bahrain (where, it must be said, conditions are cooler than the low 20°C range this week, now we’ve arrived on the ground).

But, might Red Bull opt to gain real world data with short tests using its predicted new bodywork arrangement while it has the chance in testing? Comments made by Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko to the wider Red Bull company’s TV station, ServusTV, suggest it will.

“[Mercedes] were also convinced by the data of their side-pod-less concept,” Marko said. “In practice, it didn't work at all. And we will now see in the tests whether we can successfully implement this solution, or let's say a similar solution.”

3. Hamilton finally speaks on his Ferrari move

Hamilton will face the media for the first time since his Ferrari move was made public

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Bar his 416-word Instagram post following the news he will be leaving Mercedes in 2025, all Hamilton has said on the topic of his impending Ferrari future is how “emotional” the weeks leading to the Mercedes W15 being revealed had been.

For the first time in years, Mercedes chose not to allow any outside questioning of its drivers and management when showcasing its new car. Instead, it relied on extensive press release Q&As and in-house video clips.

While this has the benefit of avoiding the overpromising, under-delivering situation Mercedes found itself for of the last two pre-seasons, it also stopped any additional questions being put to Hamilton about his decision to jump ship.

Insight: The risks in Hamilton’s Ferrari F1 move

When he faces the F1 press corps on Friday, the first clues in how he plans to play the situation will be released. Hamilton may opt to shut down Ferrari questions out of respect for his current team. But given how much more exciting his choice has made F1 in a single stroke, they surely won’t stop coming until he’s wearing red this time next year.

4. The hints of Mercedes’ plan for replacing Hamilton

As Mercedes enters its final year of the Hamilton-Russell partnership, its plans to fill the vacant seat may soon come to light

Photo by: Mercedes AMG

Mercedes did act quickly to get its side of the story out there once Hamilton had notified team boss Toto Wolff of his decision. During his extended press conference the day after Hamilton’s Ferrari move was revealed and confirmed, Wolff laid out the situation as he saw it.

George Russell is the team’s candidate to replace Hamilton as de facto team leader, with the chance to “to do something bold” with its other seat. This was interpreted as a sign of Wolff’s faith in Mercedes junior and 2024 Formula 2 racer Kimi Antonelli, who now faces a critical test of his F1 potential with the possibility of a rapid promotion to the top level.

PLUS: How Hamilton's Ferrari deal makes Russell's F1 2024 harder

But in the near three weeks since Wolff’s words, things have developed. For a start, Antonelli was immediately on the pace in F2 testing in Bahrain this month, but other candidates for replacing Hamilton have let their case be known.

This includes Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, who not only failed to stifle talk about a future outside the green team in 2025 during its own launch event, but he actually advertised how he’s “been exceeding a little bit the expectations in terms of all the physical tests and everything that I did”.

“If you are motivated, and if you want to commit, you can drive maybe until 48 or 49, or whatever, or even 50,” Alonso added.

Wolff’s reaction to this typical, and brilliant, Alonso self-promotion will be interesting. So too will be what he says of Antonelli’s work so far at Prema Racing. Wolff will face the media again in the lunchbreak on the test’s opening day.

5. Can McLaren avoid a triple dose of Bahrain misery?

McLaren's MCL38 will break cover in Bahrain, and the team hopes it will hit the ground running better than its predecessors

Photo by: McLaren

Since this stage in 2022, McLaren has arrived in Bahrain in very different situations. Two years ago, it went from leading the opening day of the first Barcelona test and staying amongst the frontrunners there to losing Daniel Ricciardo to a positive COVID-19 test for the Bahrain running. This was then curtailed by repeated brake problems.

Then last year, the orange squad logged the fewest laps of all the teams, having to repeatedly reinforce its front top/inside wheel covers and after stating at its launch it expected to be off the pace with an initially under-developed 2023 car. Which, ultimately, it was.

Now McLaren arrives at the home of its key stakeholder Mumtalakat (Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund) feeling it has improved the package that was improved so much after its inauspicious start it repeatedly threatened Red Bull in the middle and second part of last season.

PLUS: Why McLaren thinks its 2024 F1 car is already faster than the MCL60

This is much better footing, for a start, but the unexpected challenges of 2022 and 2023 testing show how fast things can unravel. McLaren will therefore be eyeing a smooth test this time around.

Lando Norris, meanwhile, is hoping to put into practice what he’s been “trying to improve” on McLaren’s simulator to avoid the qualifying mistakes he made repeatedly last year. Oscar Piastri, this time, can focus solely on preparing for a new season rather than learning the F1 ropes.

6. New Williams finally breaks cover

The new Williams FW46 hit the track for its shakedown on Tuesday

Photo by: Williams

Given the surprise of what Red Bull has already revealed, the extension of deliberately trickery in launch car renders for another year with Mercedes’ double suspension japery, plus deliberate obfuscation from McLaren and Haas in their own first 2024 car images, there’s plenty of intrigue in how the new cars will actually look this week.

But nowhere is this bigger than at Williams, which decided to only hold a livery reveal back on 5 February. The team also eschewed a typical nearby Silverstone shakedown to instead roll the FW46 out for the first time on Tuesday after arriving in Bahrain. The first images from the team’s filming day appear to show it has significantly changed the car’s nose profile to make it flatter compared to its predecessor.

Team boss James Vowles said his team’s plan was to “push things right to the limit and very late, there's no doubt about it”, which meant “admitting I wasn't sleeping for days, or probably days at a time, because the weight of 1000 people forcing your shoulders”.

How the FW46, which Williams wants to be competitive at a wider range of track types in 2024, stacks up will go a long way to releasing the tension Vowles is currently feeling.

7. Haas’s answers from its tyre-torture test experiments

Haas is remaining realistic about its expectations with new boss Komatsu at the helm

Photo by: Haas F1 Team

Expectations have been set deliberately low by Steiner’s replacement as team principal at the American squad, Ayao Komatsu. He said when the VF-24 was revealed that he reckoned “out of the gates in Bahrain… we’re going to be towards the back of the grid, if not last”.

That was quite a surprise given Steiner was axed for achieving exactly that last year, but this is likely an expectation management exercise pointed towards team owner Gene Haas.

His team is now set to concentrate on discovering exactly where it is on understanding and addressing the long-run tyre wear misery it endured across 2023. This takes on a new meaning now Kevin Magnussen has stated, “the update [at the 2023 Austin race] was more of an experiment last year” and that “it’s hard to call it an update or upgrade because it wasn’t really upwards, it was just sideways”.

“It was clear that on Sunday we just couldn’t manage the tyres for 300km – so that’s what we’re focused on,” Komatsu said about this week's coming running.

“Our Bahrain test programme is completely focused on generating the relevant data so that our engineers can understand what’s happening to the car and what’s happening to the tyres. Then we can decide, if we have good quality data, on the conclusion of how to improve it. Then we decide a different direction on that.”

Expect Haas’s end-of-test answers to be geared towards how long it will have to stay with its current design or seek another, more dramatic, development path if things are still looking as bad as they were in an awful 2023.

8. Inevitable talk of the need to ‘spice up’ F1 testing

Testing isn't meant to be interesting or engaging for fans, but that doesn't stop the annual discussion over shoehorning an additional purpose

Photo by: Ferrari

It happens every year, somewhere. Since F1 testing was first broadcast globally throughout its duration from 2019 (Sky Sports viewers in the UK got a sample over a decade earlier) – other than the initial 2022 Barcelona running for the new ground-effect machines – there has been tiresome accompanying talk about the need to spice up the ‘show’.

There is logic behind it. Making a competitive element to a test – say a last-night fastest lap competition – might bring in more eyeballs and therefore additional revenue streams for F1 and its accompanying stakeholders. Testing being sponsored by the Saudi Arabian state oil company is exactly an example of F1 finding a cash supply from something that previously didn’t exist.

But the desire to shake up the show misses the point – it’s not this at all. It’s now the only chance for the teams to get fully prepared for a demanding season.

PLUS: Does less testing really benefit the F1 spectacle?

That said, there is surely merit in Alonso’s complaint of “how unfair [it] is that we only have one day and a half to prepare a world championship”. This is with the teams restricted to running only one car across the three-day test.

9. How those panned 2024 liveries really look

After the proliferation of bare carbon-based liveries unveiled during the launch weeks, we will get to see how they look on track

Photo by: Alpine

Thank goodness for Aston, Ferrari, Red Bull and even Mercedes – adding considerable colour to the look of the 2024 grid with their corporate liveries.

The orange and green from McLaren and Sauber stands out too, but there’s no escaping that their designs are just like Haas, Williams and especially Alpine in having too much bare carbon fibre on display. RB would join the colour praise brigade but is undone by its ridiculous team name and shambolic Las Vegas launch.

PLUS: The trend apparent in F1 2024's latest disappointing livery that needs to change

Testing will at least reveal how these designs look in Bahrain’s sunny climate and night race configuration. And there should be the chance to glimpse how much the naked ramblers look alike in pack shots during the start systems trials that will close out the live sessions across the test.

10. Early indication of 2024’s pecking order

Aston Martin emerged as one of Red Bull's closest challengers last year - will anybody else make a similar leap forwards?

Photo by: Aston Martin

Of course, Red Bull starts the 2024 campaign as the overwhelming favourite and before too long, the “wait for Bahrain qualifying” refrain will rapidly be overused from drivers and team principals.

But testing is where the season’s main narratives will be established – first in how smoothly the test goes for each team, but also if a driver struggles to gel with their new machine. It’s worth recalling here how Sergio Perez was regularly off the road with the RB19 in 2023 pre-season testing and how he then failed to hit the same heights as Verstappen even after that promising start last year.

It will also be worth noting how each team stacks up in the race simulations once they’ve proved their new designs are reliable – and if any don’t, that’s a story – and how the final times stack up in the soft-tyre performance runs that typically conclude this event.

It might not have been gone long, but F1 is back in 2024.

After all the off-season shenanigans, it's nearly time to get going in earnest

Photo by: Ferrari