Summer break is over and Scuderia Ferrari is ready for the last nine races of the 2022 Formula One season, starting with the Belgian Grand Prix, which takes place next weekend at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. And for the Maranello team, one of the key factors in this second half of the year will be how to manage the power units components in order to avoid the issues encountered on several occasions this championship.
The Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps certainly looks like the best place this part of the season to take penalties and get back up fast. Ferrari has made it clear – barring unlikely second thoughts in approach to the weekend – that it will take penalties with ERS introduction. Especially for Charles Leclerc, who, it must be remembered, has only one recent turbo, mounted in Canada.
Regardless of how confident they will feel about power tuning to manage the degradation in terms of reliability, and if it will be enough to remain highly competitive in Belgium, certainly if there is a place where one would not want ‘surprises’, that venue is in Italy. “We are working on it, we want to definitively solve the problem for next year, but now we are managing it better. We were expecting problems having focused on performance to make up for the engine gap. It will take the necessary time to homologate the new parts, this does not mean that it will not be managed already this year, “Mattia Binotto said ahead of the summer break.
Ferrari has a very difficult run up ahead. Never say never, but after Budapest, it is also possible to expect one more challenger for the top positions, namely Mercedes. 2022 showed that the performance of the Silver Arrows is not easily predictable, even for the engineers of the world champion team. In any case, what George Russell did in qualifying and Hamilton in the Budapest race did not leave anyone indifferent. However, Belgium is a very different test given the track characteristics and many are convinced that at Spa they will understand if the Hungarian pole was a one-time thing or a strong signal that can lead the Brackley team to constantly develop a W13 at the top, as Mercedes remains the only car against the trend from an aerodynamically point of view.
While the regulation technical update for 2023 has been released, which we will analyze later in the season, the FIA will begin to operate – right from Spa – the controls at the floor regarding the bouncing through the anti-porpoising metric. One more variable that could affect performance, more in qualifying than in the race. Nevertheless, neither Red Bull nor Ferrari have expressed concern but we know that those who are affected by a certain measure almost never say so openly.
Meanwhile, Hungary has shown even more clearly that on a circuit where the older generation of cars needed 1.5 seconds of better performance per lap to be able to overtake at the Hungaroring, these new F1 2022 cars were able to pass with far fewer tenths.
Despite low speeds, high downforce combined with the weight of fuel on board, we saw Charles Leclerc manage to pass George Russell in the first stint, while Max Verstappen passed many people during his recovery race – cars theoretically difficult to overtake being in the top ten – with surprising ease that later facilitated his unexpected final success.
In other words, with very competitive cars, by avoiding trouble and with a bit of luck, you can climb up the field faster than in the past. Precisely for this reason in Belgium we will see sacrifices in terms of penalties because, beyond Ferrari, it is completely clear that no one could finish the season with just three power units.
At Spa-Franchorchamps, a key factor will be collecting important data on how strong these cars will be in Pouhon, which is a significant trait in understanding what wing they should use, as explained by Piergiuseppe Donadoni for formu1a.uno. The Belgian track has the most varied layout of the season in terms of speed, there is a very delicate balance which needs to be found, between having the necessary downforce not to feel precarious on the tires and staying fast in sectors 1 ‘and 3’, removing drag if possible, also to prevent porpoising. Basically it all depends on whether the teams will be able to continue running at fairly low heights. That’s why the speeds at Pouhon could give us ruthless directions. It is clear that if the FIA 0039 technical directive does not change the approaches and balances here, it will hardly happen elsewhere.
An equally important direct consequence will concern the mechanical balance, closely linked to the heights. Those who continue to set the car low will have better margins of use in the slow through a more aggressive suspension step, that is, less rigid.
So the question is: will we have cars more glued to Stavelot? “Right there we expect to understand, in that section of high-speed corners it is essential to run the car low, we will see who will continue to show the most efficient floor despite the new TD” – formu1a.uno reports, adding that even that last sector – where there will be no DRS, will be very important.
Some say they will go much faster there and much slower in the last chicane and at La Source. In fact, in Budapest the 2022 cars were slower by 2 seconds as compared to the previous generation of F1 challengers. For Spa the simulations suggest that lap times could be significantly closer than usual. Moreover, the data accumulated up to now does nothing but confirm this hypothesis.
Show your support for Scuderia Ferrari with official merchandise collection from Puma! Enter the online Puma Store and shop securely! And get your F1 tickets for every race with VIP hospitality and unparalleled insider access. Click here for the best offers to support Charles and Carlos from the track!
Going back to talk about penalties, the top names do not want to take penalties in the Netherlands, the appointment following Spa. The tortuous circuit of Zandvoort seems to have been made on purpose for the qualities of the F1-75 which should have a good chance to fight for victory in the Dutch Grand Prix; at the same time it is also Max Verstappen’s home circuit, so he too would have a double reason to serve the penalties of the updated hybrid ahead of his home race.
It is important to remember that from the act of homologation there is some time to introduce the new elements. Nevertheless, some technicians say that we will have a strange and at the same time very interesting weekend, the result of widespread and sensible choices in terms of penalty. In short, we could even see a grid forcibly inverted or almost; not to mention the weather in the Ardennes whose unpredictability should not be underestimated and could easily affect the teams both in terms of setup choices and on a tactical level. We hope for something that will make us forget about last year’s non-race.
Speaking of strategies, in Ferrari people talk about mistakes since Abu Dhabi 2010 when Chris Dyer was chief track engineer of the Maranello team: the last engineer of Michael Schumacher in Ferrari was torpedoed, the same one who won the last world championship as Kimi Raikkonen’s engineer. Over the past 12 years, from Stefano Domenicali to Mattia Binotto, every team principal has had their problems in this somewhat mysterious part of the team. It cannot be just the fault of the individual. In that sector, there are still too young people, under the big names, who look at computers a lot and little at the logical sense of how a race is going to evolve. Then something (or someone) is missing that deeply affects the management due to the fear of making mistakes. Clearly Mattia Binotto cannot talk about it to the press, defending the team just like Stefano Domenicali did to save its members. However, quietly, a prospect of change in this area (not in the long term and it is not yet known how big or small) no longer seems excluded, according to formu1a.uno.
Leave a Reply