Why in-season testing must return to Formula 1

Imagine telling Tour de France winner Cadel Evans to stay off his bicycle for the next three months, or ensuring Tom Daley's baths don't contain more than a foot of water between diving contests lest the young Briton perform a double somersault from the taps during his morning ablution rituals.

Yet that is precisely the comparable situation Formula 1 drivers find themselves in after the sport agreed to ban in-season testing as part of its cost-cutting initiatives: absolutely no sitting in moving F1 cars between the drop of the chequered flag after a race and 10am a fortnight or so later. To quote Michael Schumacher: "I cannot think of another top line sport where training is banned between events."

Fiorano was the scene of much in-season running for Ferrari in a past life © LAT

By 'training', the seven-time world champion means not a run around the block or a bout in his gym, but the act of strapping himself into an F1 car - the equivalent of Evans' bike or Daley's pool - and burning rubber to improve his own performance, plus that of his machine.

One could largely blame Schumacher for the prevailing situation, for it was during his Ferrari years that testing was taken to the extreme, with the Scuderia making its Fiorano test facility available to its star driver for up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

Ferrari was lavishly funded by Marlboro and fuelled by Shell, and could thus afford to test on every single day permitted within the regulations - effectively non-stop save for the week immediately preceding a grand prix. However, during that period shakedowns were permitted, so these rapidly deteriorated into mini 50km tests. With the tyre war between Bridgestone and Michelin at its height, both companies went all-out to develop compounds suited to all track surfaces across the world, and the toll on men, machines and money was simply enormous. It could not last, not in Maranello, not in Woking and not in Milton Keynes either.

So F1 did what it so often does when faced with a prickly problem: it threw the baby out with the bath water and banned in-season testing totally. Drivers do not see a track from the end of one season to the February 1 ahead of a new one, and not at all between grands prix. In fact, the only true seat time a driver gets once the season has started is during a race weekend - and even then running time is restricted by 'lifed' engines and transmissions, and tyre quotas.

In the meantime, the likes of Ferrari and McLaren discovered that data obtained from wind tunnel tests and simulations did not necessarily stack up once their multi-million dollar designs hit the tracks for the first time in February - when a maximum of 15 days testing (three lots of four days plus one lot of three days) are made available to teams. Not a long time to sort the inevitable issues with a new design, is it? Imagine how much sooner they would or could have caught Red Bull had they been permitted to run for three days solid in April, for example.

This lack of testing has also severely disadvantaged F1's future aces, many of whom come into the formula without even having tasted F1 power beforehand. Most join teams as 'test' or 'development' drivers, yet have no opportunity to ply their trade save for (possibly) the odd Friday foray, and, having likely come through the ranks via spec championships such as Formula Renault, GP3 and GP2, have little or no experience of developing cars.

This is as close as 'test' driver Nick Heidfeld got to driving a Mercedes © LAT

When asked in Germany about the relative characteristics of the current crop of engines, Renault F1's supersub Nick Heidfeld - who last season acted as reserve driver for Mercedes before switching to Pirelli as tyre tester with the Toyota TF109 and then secured a (Ferrari-powered) Sauber race seat - could speak with authority about three of the four power units, with the odd one out being Mercedes.

Despite being tester for the German manufacturer from February to July last year, he did not drive a meter in anger with what many believe to be the most powerful engine on the grid. In fact, had Pirelli not needed a tester and Sauber a replacement driver it is conceivable that 'Quick Nick' would have enjoyed zero seat time in 2010, despite having a contract with Mercedes.

To place the overall situation in perspective: apart from pre-season testing, a professional F1 driver will spend no more than 70 hours in his race car per year. That time is made up as follows: typically two race distances per grand prix weekend (around 70 laps during preliminary running; then the same again during the race, assuming no mishaps).

At around 1m30s per lap, that pans out at 210 minutes per race weekend, or 4,200 minutes (70 hours) over a 20-race season, leaving plenty of time for peripheral activities such as promotional work. What on Earth is Lewis Hamilton complaining about?

True, the job involves an enormous amount of travel, but no more than that experienced by permanently-accredited journalists - very few of whom, if any, regularly turn right upon boarding their flight - and simulator time. Still, on a work to earnings basis, F1 drivers are hardly on a bad screw - even when pedalling back-of-the-grid kit.

However, back to testing: In Turkey this year FIA president Jean Todt, Ferrari's sporting director during those halcyon Schumacher years, suggested during a media briefing that in-season testing - albeit restricted and tightly-controlled - should make its return.

While the suggestion was almost immediately rejected by the majority of team bosses - on the basis of 'not invented here' - gradually the paddock came around to recognise the folly of existing test regulations, and last Saturday evening the Formula One Teams' Association, which represents all teams bar Hispania, met on the top floor of Ferrari's motorhome to discuss the situation.

A return to in-season testing was discussed in Ferrari's motorhome © suttons

As outlined here by fellow AUTOSPORT man Jonathan Noble, the teams are considering sacrificing one of the February sessions, most likely the three-day test, for a similar period in late April or early May after the first round of flyaway races. Mugello (at Ferrari's suggestion) and Silverstone (the idea of all the British teams) were mentioned as possible venues, with one team boss suggesting (in jest) that Sauber was asked to nominate a Swiss test track in order to even things up. They came with little better than the classic Ollon-Villars hillclimb venue.

Jokes aside, whether in Italy or Britain (or Spain, for that matter), a modicum of in-season testing is vital to the sport's future health, and the adoption of Todt's proposal can do little harm against an enormous amount of good. Now all it needs is for Bernie Ecclestone to structure future calendars accordingly. However, given the commercials rights holder's seeming unwillingness to co-operate in endeavours involving the governing body, Saturday's FOTA meeting may have been a lost cause.

Either way, three-day tests in May do not solve the conundrum of young driver testing and development, nor do they enable Pirelli to test regularly in order to constantly improve its products. In Germany Motorsport Director Paul Hembery exclusively told this column, "We'd love to do mid-season tests in correct championship conditions - preferably at championship circuits.

"It would be ideal for us to stay on, as we do after the young driver test in Abu Dhabi, because then you have all the data from the race plus the data you will get from any modifications. From our point of view it would be ideal if we could stay on after a particular race, and it doesn't really matter where it is."

Earlier in the weekend rumours abounded that team owners were investigating Friday testing with young drivers, possibly using the previous years' cars and engine supplies so as not to jeopardise current equipment during a race weekend.

One team principal said: "Ideally we'd like to have an hour or two on Friday mornings [for young driver testing], but that would mean persuading the powers-that-be to schedule programmes accordingly. It would give fans some more to see while allowing us to directly compare future talent. Most of the guys are here in any event [competing in GP2 or GP3], so why not?"

Warming to the subject, he pointed to the commercial and technical advantages associated with running otherwise redundant cars (and suggested they could be liveried according to the tester's requirements without being in breach of current sponsor commitments) while conceding that "current designs are usually evolutions of what went before, so testing could also play a development role.

Young driver testing at Yas Marina once a year is not enough © LAT

"In most instances we have track data from the previous season and know exactly how well our team fared there, so virtually everything is directly comparable save for possible variations in weather. But, it would all depend on Bernie," he concluded.

Thus, in typical F1 fashion there are three approaches to what is in real terms a single problem that should never have arisen in the first place. However, contrary to F1's usual approach, in this case the sport has three different potential solutions, none of which are mutually exclusive in that they complement each other perfectly at comparatively little extra cost - with Friday testing even potentially paying its way.

Think about it: Young drivers on Fridays in Europe, tyre testing on Mondays after selected grands prix and in-season testing during May - back to the past, but with little of the previous expense. Now all it needs is for the CRH to play ball with the calendar and race programmes, and drivers may just get to slaving as hard as cyclists and divers.