Scuderia Ferrari had a dream start to the 2022 Formula 1 season but are aware that Red Bull remain the favourites to win the current championship despite the fact that they were not able to score a single point in the first race of the new campaign, which took place yesterday in Sakhir.
Charles Leclerc took a splendid win in the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix after starting from pole position but was involved in a close battle with Max Verstappen in the first part of the event, with the Dutch driver eventually having to retire due to an engine issue: “I think that the others are very, very strong,” said Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto on Sunday evening. “They proved to be very strong yesterday in the quali, it was really a matter of details.”
Max Verstappen was fighting Carlos Sainz for second place at the Sakhir track until a suspected power unit failure put him out with three laps to go, while he also faced braking and steering problems during the race.
“Today they could have been stronger, but maybe they had some reliability issues or there is something not perfect on their car from what we may understand from the radio communications. They would have been very fast otherwise. If I look at the first stint of Max on used tyres he was keeping the pace of Charles. So I think we should not forget also they are the world champions. They are still the favourites. And I think what we can try to do is to do our best. Jeddah in a week’s time can be a completely different picture. And I think we need to wait as I always said at least four or five races to assess.” – the Ferrari boss explained.
The Scuderia Ferrari team boss admitted that the first race of 2022 went beyond their best hopes ahead of the Bahrain weekend: “I think the one-two we were not expecting, or even not hoping for it, and finally it’s what we got. I think as we said Charles did a fantastic race, Carlos as well, it has been a bit more difficult weekend for him.” – he continued.
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The SF-75 therefore becomes the Maranello team’s first Formula 1 car to secure a race win since 2019. Mattia Binotto described it as “a good starting point” for development during the 2022 championship:
“We should not forget there have been only six days of winter testing so three days per driver trying to understand, learn and adapt to the car. I think in that respect there is still much to learn and this weekend has been very useful in that respect. Both drivers had more opportunities because of free practice, qualifying and the race to try to learn and understand the car. We’ve got now plenty more data as well. I’m pretty sure that the next race we will start to exploit further the car. There is still potential in that car, certainly, and I think Carlos is a good example, there is more potential to extract.”
“Then we need to develop the car but when you’ve got a good baseline, when they are developing, you need to make sure that whatever you are bringing to the car [improves it]. That’s even more important now that we’ve got a budget cap. So we cannot make it wrong because we have only few opportunities for development and whatever we will do, we need to make sure that those ones are the proper and the right ones.” – Mattia Binotto explained.
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