The first pre-season testing session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona highlighted a strong performance by the Ferrari F1-75 car. The challenger for the 2022 Formula 1 season desiged Maranello has attracted the attention of many insiders. Both for the originality of some of the solutions on the car, but above all also for the quality of the engine. Toto Wolff and Helmut Marko wasted no time in pointing it out as the best engine on the grid.
Ferrari recovers power unit performance
The Maranello technicians, like all the other colleagues, were called upon to make significant improvement on the power unit side. The introduction of the new E10 fuel and a technical regulation that will freeze all power units between now and 2026 (only changes to improve reliability are allowed) led the engineers to rethink the concept regarding the thermal part of the engine (internal combustion engine). The Maranello team really seems to have managed to make an excellent step forward. This is also thanks to the update of the hybrid part carried out in the final part of last Formula 1 season.
Reliability alarm?
Obviously not everything is perfect at this stage. Ferrari has found more performance, this is a fact. Even if in Barcelona the team did not push to the maximum for obvious reasons, the statements of Mercedes and Red Bull must also be added to the comments of Carlos Sainz, who in recent days had revealed his satisfaction with the progress made by the Maranello team in this regard.
The Spaniard was clear, one of the Prancing Horse’s goals is to get back to being on top with the design and construction of the best engine in Formula 1. While the indications are promising, whether they succeeded or not, still remains to be verified.
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In the meantime, however, there have been improvements and unfortunately they also come with a price. “Faced with the imminent development freezing, we went in search of maximum performance. There will be time to think about reliability ”, Carlos Sainz said at the end of the test. Words which may hint to the possibility of Ferrari pushing hard even with the risk of sacrificing the strength of the internal elements of the power unit.
The situation
Statements which are backed by some slightly alarming considerations by Michael Schmidt released during a podcast made by ‘Auto Motor und Sport’. According to the German editorial staff, the power unit of the Maranello team could show critical issues after about 3,000 / 4,000 km completed. Values that, although may seem high at first glance, are actually a bit low. Suffice it to say that during a race weekend (free practice, qualifying and the Grand Prix) on average a car runs about 750 km.
This would mean running with some reliability risk already after 4/5 races. Not a great scenario given the fact that teams are allowed to use only three power units per season, one would expect that every single engine unit can also run for 8 events (the calendar momentarily consists of 22 events, after the cancellation of the Russian Grand Prix). Obviously, everything remains to be verified and it is hoped that some more considerations in this regard will emerge from the next testing session.
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