McLaren are in action at Rockingham Motor Speedway in Northamptonshire today, conducting a filming day with Stoffel Vandoorne.
The Belgian driver, who will compete in the 2017 Formula One world championship for McLaren alongside Fernando Alonso, is driving the team's 2016 MP4-31 car.
While testing is prohibited outside of selected official test days, teams may run two promotional filming days, with running restricted to 100km each day. These days can only use one car and must only take place at FIA-approved sites in Europe, unless they have the agreement of the majority of teams to conduct running at an approved site outside of Europe.
While not a venue on the F1 calendar, or the official testing schedule, Rockingham has previously been used by Mercedes for a filming day in 2011.
The sun's back out for another trip around the Speedway. #FilmingDay pic.twitter.com/CSKl8s5ALm
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) October 13, 2016
Another filming day? Hasn't McLaren already used both its filming days at Barcelona, in February? I can be mistaken of course, but I thought all teams had two days, and McLaren spent them before the season started.
Did you remember if it was in conjunction with some event or something? According to the FIA, there are no clear rules involving any set number of days, but teams cant do more than 15 000km of testing per season, of these at least 2 sessions must be carried out by a test driver (Vandoorne in McLaren's case). They are also allowed to make 2 tests between february and 10 days before the first race. Teams are also apparently also allowed to carry out tests in conjunction with some track events (within 36 hours of said event), though its a bit unclear of what they mean with that.
No, I believe it wasn't in conjunction with an event. They lost track time due to the poor reliability and therefore called for two filming days to recover lost time. I remember this, because news reports said McLaren had used both of its filming days. But according to you, there is no maximum amount of days, just kilometres. If that's the case, then the reports were false.
Local time
Local time
Bahrain International Circuit - Winter testing
Kevin
Posts: 5,341
Is the only answer that makes sense, but if you google, you'll read reports of McLaren conducting a filming day on both the 26th and 27th of February. So I guess these reports weren't correct.