With the Formula 1 season starting next month, Racing Point Formula 1 Team are set to test their 2020 car, the RP20, at Silverstone for a promotional day on 17 June where Lance Stroll will do laps around the National circuit.
Teams are allowed to conduct two promotional days with a limit of 100km of driving per day, and are given a set of demo tyres by Pirelli. Racing Point have already used one of their promotional days in Barcelona in February.
They are also the first team to reveal that they will be using their current car for these promotional days.
Other teams have already tested using their 2018 cars, which they have unlimited mileage with. Mercedes tested at Silverstone on 9-10 June, while Ferrari plan on testing with their 2018 car at Fiorano.
Unfortunately, some teams aren’t as fortunate to still have a working older model, and are unable to do this kind of testing that the likes of Mercedes have done. Those teams will likely follow Racing Point in using this season’s machinery for any promotional events.
Racing Point team principal Otmar Szafnauer is excited to see how their challenger performs, given it’s strong showing during winter testing, and is optimistic that the schedule will play to the strengths of the car.
“We’re definitely looking forward to seeing how competitive it is,” he told Motorsport.com.
“I think the first few circuits should be OK for us, even Hungary, and Silverstone should be OK too. Then we’re back to Barcelona, and over the winter we looked pretty decent there.
“I think that schedule should bode well for us. So we’re very much looking forward to seeing how the car performs and what we can do at each one of those circuits to find the sweet spot and optimise the set-up.”
