Ferrari confirms Shwartzman for young driver FP1 outings

Ferrari says it will entrust its F1-75 to Robert Shwartzman for its two mandatory young driver practice sessions that will take place in the second part of the 2022 season.

The Scuderia has yet to decide the venue where the former F2 racer will make his Formula 1 race weekend debut.

"For us, it's Robert Shwartzman that will do our two FP1s," confirmed Ferrari race director Laurent Mekies.

"We haven't exactly decided on which events it's going to be, [but] you are right in saying that you would not pick races like Singapore or races where the race drivers need more running.

"I don't think we have an issue in doing it during one of the weekends where we have Pirelli testing."

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Shwartzman has been a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy since 2017 and the 22-year-old has already enjoyed multiple F1 tests with the Scuderia, the most recent of which took place at F1's rookie test in Abu Dhabi at the end of last season.

A winner of the FIA Formula 3 Championship with Prema in 2019, Shwartzman finished runner-up to Oscar Piastri last season in Formula 2.

Shwartzman doesn't have a full-time programme this year, so his outings with Ferrari will be a welcomed opportunity to get back behind the wheel.

"I'm a bit excited about the idea," Shwartzman told Motorsport.com recently in Maranello.

"I still don't know exactly at which events I will be on-track, but it will undoubtedly be a good moment.

"I am proud to be able to drive a Ferrari on a race weekend, and also very interested in verifying the correlation work done with the engineers in the simulator.

"We have spent so many hours improving the virtual car and bringing it as close to reality as possible. Now I can't wait to see the results of this work first-hand."

Born in Tel Aviv, Shwartzman holds both Russian and Israeli citizenships, while he competes under the latter.

"I obviously always had an Israeli passport, and for this reason, when the situation between Russia and Ukraine worsened, I decided to apply for a license in Israel," he said.

"After all, I want to be a driver, reaching Formula 1 is my only goal and, waiting for the motorsport authorities to make the decisions that they then made, the need immediately arose in me to make sure I was available again if Ferrari needed to put me in the car.

"We reacted quickly to avoid missing any potential opportunities."

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