In a recent interview for Motorsport, English senior performance engineer working for Scuderia Ferrari, Jock Clear, was asked about the Maranello team’s F1-75 challenger and the Italian side’s decision to stick with its initial aerodynamic concept, without switching tack even in the difficult moments, as Ferrari seems to have lost the development battle with rivals Red Bull during the 2022 Formula 1 campaign. The Maranello team still has faith in its original ideas, as explained by Jock Clear:
“Absolutely, especially after the big Hullabaloo in pre-season testing. And of course, the moment we heard about the Mercedes ‘no pods’ before they even arrived, obviously aero departments up and down the pit lane were like panicking and throwing sidepods off the car and going, ‘Oh my God, the Mercedes is going to be a second a lap quicker than us! And of course, the moment it rolled out in Bahrain, we were like, ‘Okay, we have done the right thing.’ The job of all of us F1 engineers is to look at what other people are doing and say, ‘Has somebody found something?’ But I think very, very quickly, our aero department was confident that we’ve gone down the right route. And clearly we have. We’re a slightly different solution to Red Bull. But I think you’ve seen that the general DNA of the Red Bull and the Ferrari are different.” – the Ferrari senior performance engineer explained.
“So we’re not going to chase their sidepod solution, simply because that probably isn’t going to work for our car, in the same way that they haven’t chased ours, because the two teams have come at it from slightly different directions.” – Jock Clear continued, as reported by Motorsport.
Alongside the tyre degradation issues, Scuderia Ferrari is also working on one of the other major weakness that was clear this year, the power unit reliability problems. Team Principal Mattia Binotto confirmed that his side will manage this situation for the final part of the 2022, with the goal of completely fixing the issue for next season:
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“We’ve seen all the teams have probably challenged themselves, let’s say, in their decisions on how brave they go with engines. And we’ve seen all the engine manufacturers are going over the numbers that were originally within the regulations, and we’re taking penalties for it. But I think that’s a decision all the engine manufacturers have made, because you simply have to develop, and you can bring reliability. Purely from a motivational point of view for the whole team, if you’ve got a powerful engine that needs a bit of reliability, everybody’s very happy to work on that. If you’ve got a reliable engine but haven’t got any power in it, people tend to lose faith! So I think we’ve made the right decision. And I think a similar decision to the other engine manufacturers, and again, we’re happy that’s all starting to settle out.” – Jock Clear pointed out.
A solid aerodynamic concept and a powerful and reliable engine are the two key factors for Scuderia Ferrari to focus on ahead of the 2023 F1 championship, with the clear target of fighting Red Bull for both titles next F1 campaign.
But these factors are just part of a bigger package. The Italian side also obviously needed is the sort of near faultless performance in the garage and on the pitwall that Red Bull Racing showed this season, which might in fact be the most difficult task for Ferrari to achieve.
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