Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto believes in the turning point of the Italian side and pursues innovation. The Ferrari boss wants for the Maranello team to be back in the fight for the 2022 Formula 1 world championship and the change in rules with the transition to ground-effect single-seaters can help mix the hierarchy seen in recent years, with Mercedes and Red Bull in front of the Scuderia.
If the technicians led by Enrico Cardile started from a blank sheet to design the 672, the project number of the 2022 Formula 1 car, the engineers headed by Enrico Gualtieri must give a sign of discontinuity and bring something new in order for Ferrari to be able to close the power gap to the Mercedes and Honda engine.
Therefore a very different power unit from the current one will be used on the ground-effect Ferrari car, with various innovative solutions: in the end the “Superfast” engine designed by Wolf Zimmermann, the German in charge of advanced projects, was promoted.
The creation of this unit was rather difficult, because at least during the first tests from the bench it was not giving the results that the technicians were expecting with solutions perhaps too extreme to work immediately, without adequate development work that takes time. And for that, a parallel line of work was designed with an engine that is the child of the current one, with less extreme concepts. A final choice had been postponed to June. Now Ferrari has arrived at the moment in which the team needs to make decisive decisions.
In Maranello they cannot make a mistake in their choice: the engine that will be homologated at the first Grand Prix next year will remain valid for three years in a row and taking too many risks could preclude the indispensable reliability for the immediately aim of fighting Mercedes and Red Bull for the titles.
Eventually the “Superfast” power unit was approved with some less extreme concepts that have been successfully translated from 065/6 which is proving to be better than anticipated. In fact, in the development work, without touching anything that is frozen, this year’s engine showed hidden qualities that also allowed a small increase in power compared to the targets that had been sought.
But, as Laurent Mekies admitted, even the Maranello engineers, like the chassis department, have abandoned the development of the V6 2021 to dedicate themselves exclusively to the nascent “Superfast”.
The new Ferrari engine adopts the architecture of the supercharging system that will see the separation of turbine and compressor, taking up the concept introduced by Mercedes and then adopted by Honda.
The… copying is aimed at introducing the compressor inside the intake box to give a very low and compact 6-cylinder in favor of more extreme aerodynamics. The name “Superfast” would be justified by a combustion chamber capable of an explosion phase with very fast ignition times.
Unpublished intake ducts capable of creating turbulent motions are being studied which will favor the speed of flame propagation, giving more homogeneity to the air-fuel mixture and to the bursting phase.
Therefore, Mattia Binotto must be recognized for having a fair dose of courage in choosing a project that was born with many unknowns, but which over time is proving to have very interesting concepts: the next six months will be crucial to finalizing a power unit that will have to bring the Scuderia back to constantly fighting for victory in 2022 and beyond.
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