Reliability issues were one of the main issues that affected Scuderia Ferrari in the first part of the 2022 Formula 1 season and also the Ferrari-powered teams, namely Haas and Alfa Romeo. The Prancing Horse’s engines have the second highest average replacement rate for each car, with about 3.7 changes per car this year, behind only Alpine’s 4. From the beginning of the year Mattia Binotto had planned to manage the season by breaking the ceiling of the three units allowed by the regulation, but the subsequent breakdowns and reliability problems that emerged from Barcelona onwards forced him to revise the initial plans. The first part of the championship ended with four engines used by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz respectively, with other replacements still in the pipeline.
Above all, the DNF of Carlos Sainz in Austria and Charles Leclerc in Baku stand out. The analysis of the power unit failure in Azerbaijan revealed to be closely connected to the one previously experienced in Barcelona. In Spain, the Monegasque driver was forced to retire due to a sudden overheating issue, not monitored in advance by the telemetry, a dynamic that suggests a sudden failure. According to a recent report from FormulaPassion.it, the investigations conducted in Maranello seem to converge towards the turbocharger shaft as the source of some of the retirements suffered during the season by the F1-75 cars. The conditional is a must, considered as when opening a damaged engine the scattered pieces and metal fragments make it difficult to identify the actual origin of the issue.
In turbocharged power units, the exhaust gases act on the turbine, carrying out work that is transmitted through a rotating shaft to the compressor and the MGU-H electric motor. The Maranello engines would suffer precisely from the excessive deformations of this shaft, deviating the various elements with respect to the predetermined axis of rotation with fatal consequences for the engine. The length of the offending shaft is accentuated by the length of the spindle: the power unit 2022 from Maranello does not have a compact system with compressor, turbine and MGU-H close together, but rather spaced apart. There are still some shadows on the actual architecture of the Prancing Horse’s engine, but according to the information that has been gathered by FormulaPassion.it, it would have some differences compared to the well-known split turbo of Mercedes, Honda and Alpine.
In any case, not all the failures in the Ferrari season are attributable to the turbocharger: the retirement of Carlos Sainz in Baku, for example, is the result of a hydraulic problem, a situation that has also affected the competition.
The Ferrari Racing Department is working hard to tackle the problem, taking advantage of the opportunities allowed by the FIA to bring updates for reasons related to reliability, according to the regulation. However, the implementation of the changes and need to wait for the supply of new metal alloys, makes it difficult to think of a complete fix before 2023.
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Meanwhile, Ferrari monitors the current power units to manage the problem, as stated by Mattia Binotto a few weeks ago: “There have been problems with reliability and there has never been a fix, so saying that they have returned is not the expression I would use. I think we understand the problem and therefore we are handling it. We have not yet resolved it definitively, but that does not mean that we fear more retirements. Managing it means facing the race with the confidence of being able to finish it.”
The Maranello Team Principal therefore reinforced the concept after the race in Budapest: “We are working on reliability and managing it, also because it will have to be resolved definitively for next season. Some changes cannot be implemented in a few weeks. However, this does not mean that it will not be managed this season.”
