Ferrari’s Superfast engine started the 2022 Formula 1 championship giving the clear feeling of having closed the power gap from Honda and Mercedes as compared to the previous two years, when the FIA had put a “muzzle” on the fuel system and triggered that secret agreement, following the alleged irregularities of the Maranello team’s power unit, which were never demonstrated.
The 066/7 engine designed by Wolf Zimmermann and managed by the working group headed by Enrico Gualtieri has aimed high. The key focus was on performance, since the power units would have been frozen after being homologated for a period of four years.
Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto did well to want an engine capable of rivaling on par with the other manufacturers, aware that the FIA would have allowed teams to work on reliability and be able to reach the duration of seven to eight GPs of life which is needed to complete a Formula 1 season with just three engines.
An exercise that has become very difficult given that only the Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel and the McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo remained in target, all the others have already taken penalties with two rounds to go, a sign that the most reliable engine is the Mercedes F1 M12 E Performance.
This however doesn’t give Mercedes too much satisfaction, because in the hybrid era is their only engine not to have won a single race with four teams using it (Mercedes, McLaren, Aston Martin and Williams).
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Ferrari blamed the mechanical failures that crippled the F1-75 when it seemed it would be able to challenge rival Max Verstappen’s Red Bull RB18 for the world titles. It was a temporary illusion and nothing more, because the reliability of the engines was never adequate to the needs, so much so that the rotations led Charles Leclerc to use six internal combustion engines and as many turbos, while Carlos Sainz, who has used five so far, could also take new power unit elements in the next round of the season, the Brazilian GP.
The fears that accompanied the design of the F1-75 car about the reliability of the power units proved to be concrete: different components yield to a mileage that does not exceed three thousand kilometers and Maranello did not have the problem of resorting to fresh units every time a new one was needed.
Carlos Sainz has had engine 6 from the Italian GP, while Charles Leclerc received the latest update at the United States GP. The Spaniard has to make another change, while it was hoped that the Monegasque would be able to express his full power in the last part of the championship to give some more certainty to Gualtieri’s staff for next year.
The 066/7 of Charles Leclerc mounted in Austin has the experimental parts in view of 2023. The design is the same as the other homologated units, but the materials have been changed in the hope of finding the duration that Ferarri are looking for.
“We changed the last power unit in Austin – explains Mattia Binotto -. Whenever we have introduced a new power unit whether it was for Charles Leclerc or Carlos Sainz we have always tried to bring reliability updates which are improvements but are not definitive. Charles’ last unit had some improvements but they are not yet the definitive solutions that we will try to achieve for next year”.
The road to reliability, therefore, is proving to be more difficult than expected: the Maranello technicians have been forced to reduce the power or to review the electronic management maps to avoid reaching the life limit too soon.
The team principal is optimistic in winning next year’s challenge and is confident the Maranello team will finally be able to fight against Red Bull at a high level, preventing them from dominating the 2023 Formula 1 season as was the case this year. But let’s not hide the fact that Ferrari fans expected to see at least some clear sigs already in the final part of this championship, with at least a few more victories, which have been missing ever since the Austrian Grand Prix back in July.
It would be good for the morale of a team that does not seem to have taken the main road yet: it is true that in the field of power units the reaction times are not as fast as the ones of aerodynamics and chassis, but the Maranello team does not seem to give the feeling of being mature to fight for a world championship. Will reinforcements arrive?
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