Ferrari is aiming for third place in the Constructors’ World Championship and is fighting with McLaren to achieve this goal, but the Maranello team also focused on the work in view of the 2022 Formula One season, although next year’s car will be totally different from the one it is racing this season.
We have seen a striking example with the adoption of the new hybrid system that allows the SF21 to limit the power gap with the Mercedes engine, thanks to a different management of the electric that is worth much more than the ten horsepower which have been gained.
The Italian side has decided to bring forward this 2022 novelty package on power unit number 4, being able to collect important data on the functionality of the system also in terms of reliability: on the test bench you can simulate the most extreme race conditions, but there is nothing better than evaluating during a Grand Prix which are the aspects that eventually need to be developed or corrected in view of an ongoing commitment in the next championship.
And it was not an isolated case, because somewhat surprisingly, Ferrari introduced a new Brembo brake disc in the first free practice session of the Mexican GP. The solution did not escape the watchful eye of Italian journalist and Formula 1 expert Giorgio Piola, because the cooling holes have an unusual design compared to the usual ones: we were used to seeing discs with over 1400 holes arranged in diagonal rows of seven holes. This feature has not changed, but the difference is that every six outlets, two holes are skipped, showing a decidedly changed design.
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Obviously everyone is doing everything possible not to disclose details and no one is willing to give explanations, but Motorsport Italy managed to understand that the Maranello team would be trying some different materials that could find space on next year’s car, when discs of 330 mm in diameter will be introduced compared to the current ones of 280 mm, thanks to the introduction of 18-inch wheels and tires.
Brembo was developing innovative solutions that had to be introduced in the supply of the same system for all the teams that was to come into force this year, but as you will remember, the FIA canceled that tender, blocking a research work that the Bergamo-based company had carried on.
Some concepts of that development can be resumed on the 2022 single-seaters and the experiments conducted by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz in Mexico prove this. Ferrari is doing a great job under the radar to get back to being a protagonist in the next championship and for the moment we can only grasp some aspects which, however, give the sign of wanting to go back to looking very high.
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