Scuderia Ferrari’s impressive start of the 2022 Formula 1 season is the result of the great work carried out by the Maranello team in the second half of the 2021 campaign and during the winter, but the newfound competitiveness is also liked to past events.
There was a time in 2019 when Ferrari’s power unit was clear at the top of the engine chart, with their straight-line speed superior to the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull. However, the Maranello team was under investigation and eventually came to a ‘private agreement’ at the end of the 2019 season. Part of the new arrangement was for the Italian side to help the FIA in researching new fuels, with the switch to E10 fuel ahead of the 2022 championship providing one of many challenges facing the teams in this brand new era of Formula 1.
At the same time, the men of the Prancing Horse, aware that they have lost a huge competitive advantage with the power unit in 2020, decided to sacrifice the resources that can be allocated in the sports seasons of the 2020/2021 two-year period in favor of the current championship which, by virtue of the technical rule changes regarding the aerodynamic concepts, could offer a great chance of returning to a high level of competitiveness.
The Maranello team has interpreted the new technical regulation in a unique way with respect to the aerodynamic philosophies of its rivals, to the point of raising doubts about the real validity of the aerodynamic concept when the new cars were officially presented a few months ago. The originality of the car body with generously sized sidepods and the unusual pattern of their upper surface intrigued many insiders.
Originality Ferrari has often paid a high price, if we just think of the unsuccessful F-92A project characterized by a gap of about 15cm between the flat floor and the body which on paper should have recreated a sort of fourth aerodynamic flow.
The winter tests and the first two rounds of the world championship rewarded the extreme choices of the men from Maranello with performances even higher than the team’s expectations, as explained by funoanalisitecnica.com.
When a team expresses an unexpected potential, as often happened in the past, rumors begin to spread in the paddock regarding the legality of certain solutions or of having circumvented even the most insignificant regulation point and given that in this case the team in question responds to the name of Ferrari, the rumors become deafening.
Ferrari’s obvious choice to place every ambition for glory in the 2022 season has aroused the suspicion that the Italian side had begun to evaluate various aerodynamic concepts before converging on the unprecedented forms of the F1-75. It should be remembered that the FIA required the teams to start work in the wind tunnel, relating to the 2022 single-seaters, no earlier than January last year. Ferrari’s clear decision not to invest in the 2020 technical project, could suggest that the Maranello engineers were able to evaluate the various aerodynamic concepts much earlier than the milestone of January 2021.
However, the suspicion appears instrumental as in modern F1 a fundamental role is played by advanced CFD software. The development of car aerodynamics essentially depends on this powerful tool, which evolves at the same pace as the cars and which allows the engineers of each team to find the most efficient solutions even before entering the wind tunnel.
As opposed to Mercedes and Red Bull, which have of course allocated a lot of resources to the 2021 project given their close battle for the titles, other teams, such as McLaren and Alpine for example, may have started the study of the 2022 single-seater well in advance, identifying the new technical regulation as a tempting opportunity to raise one’s competitive level.
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Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto, in a recent statement, categorically denied the inference that the Maranello racing department had started developing the car before its rivals and that the performance offered so far by the F1-75 is not an expression of evident superiority compared to the competition.
The Italian-Swiss manager then added that they were not sure of their level of competitiveness on the eve of the first round in Bahrain and that the good basis of the F1-75 specification will allow them to plan an evolutionary development unlike some rivals who, in light of the difficulties that emerged in the first two events of the season, will necessarily have to take advantage of the first upgrades to eliminate congenital deficits of their cars.
Despite the excellent start to the 2022 Formula 1 season, and in the wake of the painful defeats of recent years, Mattia Binotto continues to keep a low profile, emphasizing that the reference car continues to be Red Bull.
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