Ferrari has revealed that Carlos Sainz will get to make his debut in the Scuderia's colours as early as January, however it will be at the wheel of a 2018 car.

Meanwhile, McLaren and Racing Point rule out similar debuts for Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel.

With an eye on costs, and the fact that the teams will essentially be using the same cars, pre-season testing next year is reduced to just three days.

Consequently, with the prospect of just one-and-a-half days of pre-season testing Ferrari wants to give Sainz some extra running in order to familiarise himself with thje outfit and how it operates.

"One-and-a--half days is very short, very little time," Mattia Binotto told reporters via video-link today. "Consequently, we are trying to organise something for Carlos to make sure he can speed up somehow his integration with the team, with the engineers, with the car, with our way of working and procedures.

"Simulator will be important in that respect," he continued, "where he works with this race team, engineers, technicians.

"We are also currently trying to organise January time eventually to run with an old car, just make sure again to get used to mainly our team and our procedures and our people."

"The rules are pretty clear of what we can do plus we also do not have the possibility at McLaren to run an older car," said Andreas Seidl, when asked if McLaren plans a similar outing for Daniel Ricciardo. "So it's straightforward, Daniel will only have the possibility in this single test with these three days. Of course we are working hard with the team and from 1 January onwards we will integrate him in the team as quickly as possible."

In fact, McLaren's situation is somewhat different for in switching from Renault to Mercedes power units the team is having to make quite significant changes to its car in order to accommodate the new engine.

At Racing Point, which will have morphed into Aston Martin by the time Sebastian Vettel arrives, the fact is the team doesn't have a 2018 car.

"We too don't have the ability to run a two-year-old car," admitted Otmar Szafnauer. "So we'll be doing everything we can with Seb to get him integrated in the team, the sim work, and use the three days of testing we have to the best of our ability to get him ready for the first race."

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