Scuderia Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is focused on the French Grand Prix with the determination of someone who needs to recover points against the championship leader, Max Verstappen. The 38 points gap in the drivers’ standings is important, but the Maranello team’s hope is to recover some more ground in the next two rounds of the 2022 Formula One season until the summer break.
The next round of the championship takes place at the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, Var and marks the first race of the second half of a season that promises to be very long and hard-fought, in which reliability will be an important, if not decisive, factor. If we want to look at the brutality of the numbers in Maranello, there is not a lot to be happy about, because the Scuderia is the one that has covered the least kilometers in 11 races (5,280 km) followed by Alfa Romeo and Haas.
If the most reliable power unit is the Mercedes one, the most fragile is certainly the Ferrari one. The failure of Carlos Sainz’s 066/7 in Austria with the Spaniard’s F1-75 engine that caught fire was the latest demonstration of a very powerful and high-performance engine, but also too weak to the stresses it is subjected to.
At the Red Bull Ring (as in Baku) the 6-cylinder failed, forcing the Maranello team to lose other important points in the battle against Red Bull and Max Verstappen: although it was the PU2 (and not engine 3) the one that failed, first used at Silverstone and which remains among the parts available for the Spaniard, a completely new power unit will be fitted on the F1-75 Carlos at the Castellet circuit, according to Motorsport Italy.
The reason is simple: the internal combustion engine will carry some changes with respect to the previous version that are the result of the data gathered and studied from the power unit issue of Charles Leclerc in Baku. The engineers led by Enrico Gualtieri hope to extend the life of the engine 4 with a longer overall duration, but having to take penalties at the Paul Ricard circuit, most likely Ferrari will also run the new hybrid system that should have entered the scene in Belgium or Monza.
This would be the solution that helped Mick Schumacher in Styria, although this idea was denied by Team Principal Mattia Binotto. With the updated version of ERS (the latest approval is possible until September) the 066/7 will also be able to count on a few more electric horses.
If that were the case, Ferrari would go to France with the intention of aiming for a one-two finish to try to make Charles Leclerc’s points recovery more consistent over the RB18 of the Dutchman. The Monegasque will be able to rely on two fresh homologated engines (4 and 5, both used for the first time in Canada), while the Spaniard will have a new engine which has to prove to be just as competitive but definitely less fragile.
This 066/7 engine that will be mounted on Carlos Sainz’s car becomes strategic for Ferrari because it will serve to plan the second part of the season: with a more solid engine, the Scuderia will also be able to plan the next power unit replacement for Charles Leclerc, perhaps without running into other failures.
And in the meantime, other functional changes to reliability could arrive, which the Maranello technicians will be able to integrate into the engine. If this were the case, we would have an extraordinary test of Ferrari’s ability to react, provided that the two current engines of Charles will be able to run without surprises.
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