Pre-season Testing Concludes With Final Day at the Red Bull Ring

The F1 Academy field returned to action today at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg for one final pre-season test session, ahead of the inaugural race weekend at the same track.

The fifteen drivers completed over 1000 laps as the five teams finalised their strategies ahead of the two Free Practice sessions and two Qualifying sessions, which will take place tomorrow.

Having overcome her arm injury that hampered her preparation for the 2023 season, MP Motorsport’s Hamda Al Qubaisi topped today’s timing sheets, with a time of 1:30.880.

The Emirati driver was delighted with her performance: “I think today went really good. With the pre-season testing, all I had been doing was focusing on my arm and recovery and it all went well. I had a really good level of support behind me, and we can see I’ve had massive jumps in improvement.

“Barcelona I was 2.6s off, Paul Ricard I was around P5 and today was the fastest lap of the day! I think if I keep working like this with my teammates we will keep getting faster.

“I’ve been to the Red Bull Ring many times and my first ever race in single-seater was here so it is nice to be back and it felt like a déjà vu moment when I was driving around!”

Youngest driver on the grid, PREMA Racing’s Chloe Chong finished second in the morning session, only 0.4s off Al Qubaisi’s lead time, and said: “I think today went ok, starting off second in the standings in the morning was a nice difference as I was only expecting to be 10th or 11th, since the girls we are driving against are five or six years older than me. It is nice being the youngest in the field!

“In the afternoon, we kind of settled down and did a race run. We are happy with the consistency, but we are trying to work on my times at the start of the session. I was happy to finish fifth in the afternoon session knowing there’s a lot more in the bag to come tomorrow.”

Rodin Carlin’s Abbi Pulling was the fastest driver at Circuit Paul Ricard and was third fastest in the afternoon practice session today at the Red Bull Rind. She said: “Considering the team and I haven’t been here before, it went probably better than we expected. We made lots of progress through the day but didn’t quite maximise the new tyre runs.

“We know where we need to improve, and our race run we did in the afternoon was really, really strong so we will just see how it all plays out tomorrow.”

2023 F1 ACADEMY - SPIELBERG TEST, DAY 1, SESSION 1

2023 F1 ACADEMY - SPIELBERG TEST, DAY 1, SESSION 2