F1, Ferrari: gap to rivals has been reduced from 1.4s in 2020 to 0.7s in 2021. Gap to rivals has been reduced from 1.4s in 2020 to 0.7s in 2021.

For Scuderia Ferrari the 2020 Formula 1 season will unfortunately be remembered as one of the worst championships in the Maranello team’s history, more precisely the worst since 1980. From the very poor SF1000, the Italian side had to think of options to improve the car despite the limited development opportunities and Ferrari started the current season with the the SF21. A car that was clear would not be able to challenge for the top places, but at the same time appeared much more competitive than the single-seater from last season, as demonstrated by the results in the first part of the 2021 F1 championship.

Speaking of the improvements shown by the Maranello team’s SF21 car, Team Principal Mattia Binotto underlined that the gains are around seven tenths even if the gap compared to the main competitors remains for the moment large:

“If we take into consideration the lap time and pure car performance, so let us take qualifying because that is where we are all at the maximum performance, if we take the average of the entire year, [last season] we were 1.4 seconds off the pole position time. Today we are about 0.7 seconds away. A 0.7 seconds gap is still a distance and is not negligible, so we are fully aware of it, but still I think we halved the gap to the best and that is encouraging because it shows that the direction we took is the right one.” – Scuderia ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto explained.