The FIA is introducing tighter restrictions on the amount of testing teams may do with cars built for previous seasons.
However the rules will allow teams more opportunities to run inexperienced drivers instead of their regular racers.
While opportunities to run their current cars outside of race weekends are tightly limited, most teams often run their earlier cars in compliance with the Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) regulations. Mercedes have done so for their new 2025 driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Alpine have done the same for Jack Doohan and most of their rivals have employed a similar approach.
The FIA has now moved to cap the total TPC running teams may do for the first time. From 2025 each team will be allowed to cover up to 20 days of TPC running, of which drivers entered in the championship can only cover a combined total of 1,000 kilometres over four days. The mileage other drivers may cover is limited only by the days available to their teams.
A further tightening of the rules will prevent teams gaining an advantage by running on circuits shortly before they hold grands prix. A new clause forbids any TPC running at a track 60 days before it holds a grand prix. Teams may also not run at any circuit currently on the calendar “if the circuit is deemed, at the sole discretion of the FIA, to have undergone significant modification” since F1’s last race there.
But the FIA has also moved to prevent teams testing at circuits long absent from the calendar. Teams will not be allowed to test at any track which F1 did not visit in the current or preceding season. That means venues such as Mugello, Magny-Cours and Mugello will no longer be an option.
Historic racers will able to race newer F1 machinery after the FIA introduced a “race and significant update” to those regulations. At a stroke it has permitted cars from three decades of racing to enter competitions.
Cars from F1’s ‘turbo era’ in the eighties, and other machinery from the period 1987 to 2000, will be allowed to participate in FIA competitions for the first time. Cars from the Formula 3000 category, which existed between 1985 and 2004, will also be allowed to race.
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Formula 1
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