McLaren wants extended F1 testing programme in 2022

For cost reasons teams agreed to have just a single three-day session in Bahrain in 2021, shared between their two drivers.

That put extra pressure on any teams that suffered mechanical problems at the test and lost track running, and it also made life difficult for drivers settling into new teams, including McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo.

Seidl says he expected Ricciardo and other drivers in new teams to have a harder time adapting.

“I won't say it's a surprise,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com. “We know it's not just straightforward to jump from one car into another one, when you only have one and a half days of testing.

“I think there's no point complaining about the one and a half days of testing, because that was an agreement between all teams in order to only have one test this year to save costs. So no point going into that too much.

“We all hope that for next year, we go back to more testing days again, especially knowing that we have completely new cars next year.”

Seidl also hopes that the two tests are held with an interval that will allow teams to analyse what they learn from the first outing, in effect mirroring what McLaren tried to achieve this year with its filming day running.

The Woking outfit, which had the added challenge of switching from Renault to Mercedes power, made a special effort to complete its new car early.

It was able to squeeze in two Silverstone filming days in order to help Ricciardo settle in and the team itself to learn about its new power unit with enough time to react before the Bahrain test.

He said: “In my point of view, or at least from the McLaren point of view, it makes sense to do two tests with a good gap also in between, in order to be able to digest what we have learned from the first test, and also to be able to react with these brand new cars.”