The 2022 Formula One season is a campaign that on the one hand marks the introduction of the ground-effect cars and on the other hand puts an end to the development of the first turbo-hybrid power unit version which made its Formula 1 debut back in 2014. Indeed, on 1 September, the development freeze of the current engines will be 100% given that the time available to operate at the performance level on the electrical part will also expire.
From 1 September onwards, it will be possible to make changes to the engines only for reasons related to reliability. Then, in 2026, the new power units without MGU-H will be based on a regulation that has recently been published by the FIA and which should lead to the entry into Formula 1 of new manufacturers such as Porsche and Audi.
For the engine manufacturers currently involved in Formula 1, therefore, 2022 was a key season to evaluate the quality of the engines produced. In 2021, the best combination of performance and reliability was achieved by the Honda RA621H power unit which finally reached the “peaks of Everest” to quote Toto Wolff. In 2015, the Japanese brand returned to Formula 1 alongside McLaren, experiencing a three-year nightmare. Only in 2019 did the first victory with Red Bull come and then two years later the Max Verstappen-Red Bull-Honda trio broke the Mercedes dominance, as the German team also had many reliability problems last season, taking several penalties on the starting grid with both Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.
Ferrari therefore needed to make huge steps on the engine side to be able to get back on top this championship, after two years without victories in 2020 and 2021. The power unit of Maranello already at the end of 2021 had shown that it could have a very efficient electrical part and during winter Ferrari completed the job with an excellent thermal component in terms of performance. Reliability is still a weak point for the Maranello team as Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz suffered a total of three retirements (two for the Monegasque driver and one for the Spaniard) due to power unit failure. Furthermore, both Ferrari driver have already taken penalties on the starting grid in the first half of this 2022 campaign.
These were unavoidable problems according to Mattia Binotto. The team principal of Scuderia Ferrari, in fact, underlined that the current Honda power unit has many more hours of dynamic dyno testing behind it than the young Ferrari engine which was finalized last year:
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“We are certainly paying the price for a very aggressive development – explained Mattia Binotto in an interview for the German newspaper Auto Motor und Sport – it was clear that we had to push ourselves to the limit because we could not afford to accept a long period of performance not as good as our opponents in view of the power unit development freezing expected in 2022. The goals we set ourselves were very ambitious. I have never seen such a big leap in my 25 years of working at Ferrari. It was an extraordinary achievement, especially at a time when development working hours are limited. And that’s what we paid for in terms of reliability. In normal years, we would have increased test bench hours and run parallel programs for performance and reliability. This time we had to make a choice. Now, if I count the hours we have dedicated to the new engine and compare them with those that Honda has devoted to their power unit, we are certainly at a disadvantage. Honda had the necessary experience because it developed an existing engine. We are only doing it now. On the track and on the test bench. The goal is to solve the problems as soon as possible ” – Mattia Binotto concluded, as reported by AMuS.
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