Does Ferrari get a passing grade? This is the big question surrounding the Maranello team’s 2022 Formula 1 season. The key to the dilemma is its contextualization. If we look at the previous seasons, Ferrari’s has shown an irrepressible improvement. After two difficult championships and a humiliating zero in the race win stats, four victories arrived in 2022 (three with Charles Leclerc, the other one with Carlos Sainz) and many pole positions, no less than twelve, which made the F1-75 the best car on Saturday.
Precisely these results, alongside a second half of the season clearly dominated by Red Bull and Max Verstappen, suggest that the world championship which ended on November 20 in Abu Dhabi could suggest the idea of rejection. Yes, because a single-seater that was able to defeat everyone at the start and then, race after race, turned into an unreliable car that was on average incapable of managing the tires, can only be evaluated as not living up to expectations.
The team put in a lot of its own with ineffective strategies that created a negative context made up of poor developments and engine solidity which failed during the season and forced the Maranello engineers to limit the available power to avoid other unexpected retirements as those in Spain, Austria and on both F1-75 cars in Baku. Even the drivers, it should be underlined, at a certain point let themselves be influenced by the circumstances by making some avoidable errors such as that of Charles Leclerc at Paul Ricard, a key episode that allowed Red Bull and Max Verstappen to gain a huge advantage at the top of the standings.
The great positive aspect for Ferrari that emerged in the 22 races that structured the 2022 championship is an aerodynamic concept which, as long as it was supported by reliability and the relative possibility of spending all the “power tokens”, proved to be very valid. The single-seater designed by David Sanchez was capable of producing a very solid aerodynamic load. This was proven by the telemetric data that during the year and post-session analyses from each race weekend.
Often the F1-75 car was even more effective than the Red Bull, especially in low speed areas when the engine showed a progression that not even the triumphant Honda V6 had. In short, for about ten races, the car entrusted to Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc proved to be aerodynamically strong and potentially worthy of a title. Next year it will be necessary to overcome the difficulties related to the engine to unleash all the available power, an element that is the basis for the aero-mechanical project. If they manage to overcome the weaknesses in the factory it will be possible to emerge as the real contender for the title.
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Frédéric Vasseur, from the moment of starting his operational work in January, will have to work precisely on the less solid aspects that have limited the aspirations of the Prancing Horse. It won’t be easy at all, but you need a shot to turn disappointment into motivation. The discouragement in enthusiasm. Defects in virtue. How long it will take and what efforts it will take is not possible to predict. It is likely that there will be a period of adjustment to the new methodologies that will go beyond those imposed for four years by Mattia Binotto.
Precisely that of time could be the biggest limit that Ferrari will have to break down. Will the team succeed by becoming a credible competitor in the season that will start on March 5 in Bahrain? According to Norbert Haug, former vice president of Mercedes and a man of proven experience, the answer is not positive. “Ferrari hasn’t had a disastrous year as they finished second in both standings. Red Bull would never be beaten by Ferrari. And not because they made some weird strategic decisions over the course of the year and bungled at several stops. Ferrari could not have achieved a better result in both championships, even without making mistakes.”
A rather lucid and realistic statement since, without a solid update program, it was very difficult to keep up with a team that scheduled a concrete update plan that brought the car to Max Verstappen’s “driving comfort zone”.
“For 2023 I don’t imagine a winning Ferrari at all”. This is the latest, bitter prediction of the German manager who evidently believes that the winter break is not enough for Maranello to close the gap to Red Bull and then present itself at the starting line as a team to beat despite a Mercedes that has a lot of ground to make up after the half flop of the W13 and although Red Bull must operate under the weight of the burden represented by the penalty inflicted by the International Federation following the budget cap infringement.
Norbert Haug’s prediction is the result of observation and accumulated experience. But it certainly can’t be considered an automatically fulfilling prophecy. Even though Ferrari is in the midst of a procedural and operational recalibration, it has all the resources and skills to surprise and take the fight to Red Bull. While waiting for the first races of the 2023 Formula 1 season, any comment is allowed. Then as the track will be the one that tell who was right and who will possibly have to go back and rethink their predictions.
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