RACING BULLS PLANS FIRST TEST FOR TSOLOV ALONGISDE FILMING DAY
Racing Bulls will take to the track in Imola on August 27 for its second and final filming day of the season. Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad will drive the VCARB 03, for a maximum distance of 200 km. In the meantime, Nikola Tsolov will get his first proper F1 test, driving the VCARB 02 as part of the team’s TPC programme.
Tsolov currently sits on 25 active superlicence points, all of them earned last year with his runner-up finish in FIA Formula 3 behind Rafael Câmara, worth 25 points on the F3 scale. His 2022 Spanish F4 title also carried points, but they have dropped out of the rolling three-year window the FIA uses. He needs 40 to race in Formula 1, so he is 15 short.
Formula 2 awards 40-40-40-30-20-10-8-6-4-3 down the top ten. That means anything from first to third this season adds 40 points and takes him to 65.
The points are only half the requirement. To be granted a superlicence a driver must also complete at least 300 km in a representative Formula 1 car, consistently at racing speed, over a maximum of two days. Thus, with the TPC Racing Bulls prepared for the Bulgarian, the FIA Formula 2 championship leader will get what he needs to drive in an official Formula 1 free practice session.
Tsolov gets his F1 debut
Tsolov, who’s leading the Formula 2 standings, has been driving Racing Bulls’s 2025 car on the F1 simulator for a few months and now he’s ready to hit the track.
It won’t be the first time Tsolov drives an F1 car. Last summer he took the Red Bull RB7 to the streets of Sofia – capital of Bulgaria and his hometown – as part of a showrun. More recently, he drove the Red Bull RB8 at Goodwood.
Imola is usually the best choice for teams who want to prepare the setup for Monza. The run from Rivazza to Tamburello is very useful to test the high-speed aero configuration and, crucially, the energy deployment strategies.
But not only. Imola is increasingly likely to hold the season finale, therefore the data could become very useful at the end of the season. Moreover, Racing Bulls would have the advantage of being the sole team to have tested the 2026 car at Imola.
It was a tradition of the team to cap the filming day with a family day, an opportunity to invite friends and family to visit the pits of a Formula 1 team. Instead, this year it was planned for Silverstone, for the 250 employees in Milton Keynes, only for it to be replaced with a tour of the factory.
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