McLaren planning filming day close to first pre-season test

©McLaren

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McLaren says that it intends to stage its 2022 filming day just prior to the first pre-season test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, scheduled for February 23-25.

On Friday, McLaren became the fourth team to hold a car launch for the forthcoming season.

While Haas and Red Bull used generic show cars to unveil their livery, McLaren and Aston Martin gave a first look at the brand new chassis they will be using in response to new technical rules and regulations being introduced.

Technical director James Key said on the night that he was proud McLaren had been able to present a "real car"' albeit with some sensitive parts hidden from the probing eyes of the media “for obvious reasons”.

See also: Gallery of Aston Martin AMR22's shakedown at Silverstone

Aston Martin subsequently took their new AMR22 car to the track for a shakedown at Silverstone, with both drivers Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel taking turns at the wheel running io Pirelli control tyres.

But McLaren isn't planning on getting out and about quite so soon, preferring to leave their first real life track runs until nearer the start of official testing.

“Similar to probably every other team, we’re also planning to do a filming day very close to the start of the official test in Barcelona," McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl told Motorsport.com.

“That’s in the schedule," he said. "[We] still have a lot of boxes to tick in the next week to be finally ready for that."

Seidl said that he was "absolutely confident that we’ll be ready” and praised the "great work everyone is putting in" in the build up to the new season.

Filming days are opportunities for teams to have limited running on track in order to record video footage for use in PR campaigns and by the team's corporate sponsors.

Running on filming days is limited to just 100km, so the team will still have to wait for the official first test to get a real sense of how things are looking with the brand new MCL36 unveiled at McLaren Technology Centre on Friday.

Media representation at that test will be limited, with no live coverage or timing allowed. Instead, the second test in March in Bahrain will be streamed live online.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.