Dominance. There are no other terms to describe Red Bull’s F1 2022 World Championship which, with the victory in the United States Grand Prix last Sunday, reached a total of 15 wins out of 19 rounds this year. Max Verstappen’s comeback that was unstoppable for both Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes – who was hoping to take his first win this season – states it clearly.
There is a moment in which the technical dominance of the Austrian car becomes very clear: when Max overtakes Lewis and the latter, in the next moments, with DRS open in the straight line, still loses ground to from the Dutchman instead of getting closer.
An unconditional surrender that shows once again that this is Adrian Newey’s world championship. The chief technical officer of Red Bull was also rewarded with the satisfaction of yet another Constructors’ title of a glorious and perhaps unrepeatable career. the supremacy in terms of top speed was one of the key points for the RB18 project which, in the long run, won the technical war with Ferrari that in the United States once again had no answer to its rivals’ speed. A habit that has continued since the French Grand Prix.
After 19 races, it is now self-evident that Ferrari and Red Bull have taken divergent technical directions and that those adopted by the Milton Keynes team have proved decisive in winning both world championship crowns. But this does not mean that the philosophy on which David Sanchez’s car was based is wrong. Jock Clear, Ferrari’s Senior Performance Engineer, explained this in an interview for Tech Talk.
“There is nothing in our car that is wrong with regards to top speed, just as there is nothing wrong with Red Bull with regard to low speed. It’s all about technicians choosing a direction to go, a decision that is made very early in the development path. We took it in August of last year, which is why it is not something that can be changed easily. Obviously the two different solutions return similar results in terms of lap time, reaching it however in slightly different ways.” – the Ferrari Senior Performance Engineer concluded.
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However there is more than a doubt that, in the end, the performances of the two cars converge because the track has issued final verdicts. Ferrari won the ephemeral and useless trophy for the best qualifying car. Which brings out even more the difficulties encountered during the races in which the F1-75 has turned into a unsuccessful project that, like last Sunday, struggled even compared to a Mercedes W13 that appeared more brilliant in the United States.
The historic Ferrari engineer suggests that the budget cap was a limit in trying to close the gap: “In the past, we tended to bring two or three large packages every year. But I think that with the budget situation this year most of the teams have gone more gradually, bringing a piece to one race rather than another, with smaller incremental updates. We don’t see big leaps forward or packages that guarantee half a second per lap, but at each race people bring small details that fit into a package that is now well established at this point of the year”. – he pointed out.
This is why the controversy over the budget cap breach by the world champions is holding its ground. There are those who believe, among the competition, that even with some small extra-expenses, ultimately decisive advantages can be achieved. But this is the matter of the FIA which, at the speed of a snail, are taking steps to reach a compromise agreement with the offenders. What matters for Ferrari is to have understood when and why the technical path ended without the possibility of fighting for the titles season, to avoid running into another year of disappointments. In 2023 victory is a must.
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