Scuderia Ferrari was able to once again challenge for race wins in the 2022 Formula 1 world championship after two very difficult seasons. The Maranello team won two of the first three races of the current campaign and looked set to challenge Red Bull for the world championships until a series of reliability issues and strategy mistakes led to a huge deficit to Red Bull.
Still, a major factor in the Italian side’s strong comeback this year was represented by its power unit improvements, that helped the Maranello team recover a huge performance deficit to the Mercedes, Honda and Renault-powered cars from the past few seasons.
Despite the fact that it was hard to know just how strong the F1-75 challenger was until the first round of the current campaign, the power unit figures coming out of Maranello showed the Italian side managed to make a huge step forward – more than anything Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto had seen until now.
“We had some more clarity on the power unit, yes, because we knew where we were on the power unit, the regulations were consistent,” Mattia Binotto explained in a recent discussion with Motorsport.
“On the power unit, we set big numbers in terms of objectives. And what I’ve seen that we have been capable of developing during last season for 2022 on the power unit, in more than 25 years in Maranello, I never saw that. That’s showing how much the team has been capable of delivering. So that was great on the power unit.” – he added.
The big improvements from 2022 came after the Maranello team was in a difficult position two years ago, due to the power unit development freeze caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the push to reduce costs.
The impact of Ferrari’s deficit regarding the power unit was clear in the 2020 Formula 1 season, as the Maranello team had its worst championship finish in 40 years. Despite the fact that the Italian side’s gains on its power unit have been impressive in 2022, this camse with a price in terms of reliability. Charles Leclerc suffered two DNFs due to power unit failure while in the lead, at the Baku City Circuit and in the Spanish Grand Prix, while his Maranello teammate Carlos Sainz suffered an engine issue while he was on his way to completing a one-two finish for Ferrari at the Red Bull Ring.
When asked if the reliability problems are caused by the fact that Ferrari pushed too far on performance for the current F1 campaign given the development freeze, Mattia Binotto explained:
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“I don’t know if it’s pushing it too far, because pushing on performance is never enough. Certainly, we will put priority on performance rather than reliability. What does it mean? That maybe we were short on our homologation plan. More than that, as well on the power unit, like for the others, we have got restrictions on dyno hours. And those restrictions have been influencing the result, because in other periods with no restrictions, you will simply multiplied the effort on the dyno for both performance and reliability. So being limited by dyno hours, you need to make your own choice when it’s September, October, November and December. And no doubt that we push the boundaries of the performance beyond what would have been a normal plan for reliability. But because we knew that it would have been important to recover the gap, then it could have been frozen for four seasons. Reliability can always be fixed later on.” – he added.
The Ferrari boss feels the several problems encountered by his team this year which have been related to the engine side represent a normal process:
“Experiencing failures at the race track that are not fully-known problems compared to the bench, but may be problems which are [arriving] simply because we are adding experience to a very green project. With all the specificity of a race track compared to a bench you’re simply learning the product. I think that could have been expected. I’m not completely surprised.” – Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto concluded.
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