Haas F1 will not be the only one to rotate this week on the Jerez circuit in order to get its starting drivers back into shape, among other things (read here).
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, debuting in Formula 1 this year, will also be present, at the wheel of a Mercedes F1, but, while he is already used to ground-effect F1 cars, he will be at the wheel of a 2020 single-seater, the W1.
The choice seems a little off, it would have been more logical to run it in a 2022 or 2023 F1 to ensure that this week's effort is as close as possible to that to be provided in 2025.
But Mercedes' decision is deliberate and a result of new restrictions imposed this year on the operation of old F1 cars. Until the end of last year, teams had virtually unlimited possibilities in terms of running, which they could do with older cars.
As part of what is officially classified in F1's sporting regulations as TPC (testing previous cars), there were no limits in terms of mileage for anything teams wanted to do with cars that had at least least two years.
That's why some youngsters – like Oscar Piastri with Alpine in 2022 and Antonelli himself last year – have run comprehensive testing programs to help them get to grips with circuits and F1 cars.
But following discussions sparked by a test at Imola that Red Bull conducted with Max Verstappen in a 2022 RB18 ahead of last year's Spanish Grand Prix to better understand its RB20's handling issues, the question driving in TPC has become a hot topic.
And, amid threats from some teams to launch separate TPC programs for their racing drivers in order to achieve technical gains, new rules were established to limit what would be allowed.
The new regulations that were finally approved imposed a series of new restrictions, including a limit of maximum 20 days per year of TPC for each team. Additionally, current racing drivers are limited to just 1,000 kilometers of driving in TPC cars.
-These new restrictions theoretically left the door open for Mercedes to use TPC mileage by running Antonelli in its 2023 F1 at Jerez.
However, with the TPC considered very useful – and Mercedes likely to use it for Antonelli during the season to drive at other tracks or for additional training – it was decided not to burn this quota unnecessarily this week for what is nothing more than a re-acclimatization test.
Mercedes has therefore chosen to release F1 from 2020 to use what is officially known as Testing of Historic Cars (THC).
This is defined in the regulations as testing any car which has been “designed and constructed to comply with the technical regulations of any of the three calendar years falling immediately before the calendar year preceding the championship year”.
This means that, for the 2025 season, cars from 2021, 2022 and 2023 are valid for the TPC, while the first year THC therefore concerns 2020. The current cars are considered F1 from 2024 and 2025.
With the limited change in regulations between 2020 and 2021, this also means that the W11 is not far from what Antonelli became accustomed to during his first F1 tests last year with the W12.
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