Scuderia Ferrari ambassador Marc Gene gave his views on the challenges the Imola track will bring ahead of the 2022 Formula 1 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix this Sunday and also confirmed the Italian side will bring some limited upgrades, which should also be the case for rivals Red Bull and Mercedes.
There are high expectations for Ferrari as Formula 1 heads back to the famous Imola circuit this weekend for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, the first race which takes place in Europe this year. While Sunday’s GP will of course be the main event, all eyes will be on the cars also on the first day of running in Imola, as new components and upgrades are expected up and down the paddock.
The Maranello team have enjoyed a great start to the new campaign, that sees them comfortably top both championships after the first three rounds, but at the same time Ferrari are aware the development battle with Red Bull will most likely decide the outcome of this year’s titles. As a result, the Italian side has teased some updates to the F1-75.
A few days ago, Carlos Sainz confirmed that Ferrari has car in the wind tunnel which is “better” than the one we saw on track in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia and allowed Charles Leclerc to score two race wins for a total of 71 points from a possible 78 so far.
However, Marc Gene, a former Ferrari test driver and current Ferrari Ambassador, confirmed the Maranello team has made the call to only run a few small upgrades this weekend, despite the venue is situated very close to Ferrari’s home base in Maranello, meaning there would not have been any logistical issues.
The Emilia Romagna GP weekend will mark the first time this year we get to experience the new F1 Sprint format, which will later return for the Austrian Grand Prix and the Brazilian Grand Prix. This format, which was tested on three occasions during the previous season, means that just one hour of free practice is available on Friday before the qualifying session. This of course limits the time teams have to evaluate and identify the ideal set-ups for the car, not to mention the possibility of testing possible new components.
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“We’ve decided not to bring that many [updates] because it is going to be a Sprint race on Saturday, so there is only going to be one hour of Free Practice, so there’s not a lot of time to test new parts,” Marc Gene said, in a recent interview for Sky Sports News – “I don’t know how the team are going to approach that. On our respect, we prefer to just concentrate on the set-up on Friday for Free Practice and then it is going to be qualifying just after that.” – he added.
Scuderia Ferrari know their rivals are also close to introducing the first upgrade package for the 2022 cars, but do not expect to be alone in running only limited upgrades for the Imola weekend, taking into consideration the limited time provided by the Sprint Race chedule. Alpine, Haas, AlphaTauri and McLaren are amongst the teams which say they will bring some changes, regardless of the reduced practice time: “I don’t expect, as I say, to see people bringing a lot of updates. We prefer to concentrate on the set-up to bring this car as low as possible. The lower you can run the car without the porpoising being an issue, of course, the more performance you have.” – the Spanish professional racing driver concluded.
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