Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto admitted that the F1-75’s pace may have suffered a drop in this second part of the 2022 Formula 1 season also because the Italian side has been focusing on the development of next year’s project.
Following last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix, as the Maranello team notably struggled even against Mercedes at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, many wondered why that happened and why the F1-75 car were almost lapped by race winner Max Verstappen.
“It’s unclear what is happening to Ferrari,” – said Vitaly Petrov, who drove in Formula One for Renault F1 Team in 2010, Lotus Renault GP in 2011 and Caterham F1 Team in 2012 – “Perhaps they have just abandoned the development of the car, realising that they need to concentrate on next season,” the Russian added. “I think many teams have chosen a similar tactic. Perhaps Red Bull too, as you can see that other teams have come closer to the leader in terms of speed.”
Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz did in fact confirm that the Maranello team is now focused firmly on the 2023 Formula 1 championship, with the goal of finally being able to challenge Red Bull for the world titles:
“It will be a new year, a new car, new rules for the floor. A new chance for us. This is a new opportunity for us. I believe that we will draw conclusions from the results of this season, and the team will build a great new car. I am ready to fight and I look forward to progress from Mercedes too. It looks like they will join us in this battle,” Carlos Sainz explained, at the end of the Mexico City Grand Prix.
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Even Mercedes seems to confirm that it has gradually recovered the gap to the F1-75 cars as a result of its constant development of the W13 car, with the goal of evaluating and understanding the main issues of its ‘no sidepods’ design introduced this season:
“We risked wasting a lot of resources, and not just financially, to understand why the concept seemed fast in the factory but didn’t work on the track,” a Mercedes engineer is quoted as saying – “We wanted to fully understand the W13 to be able to work at full speed on a completely different W14.”
After the race which was held at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto confirmed the view expressed by Vitaly Petrov regarding the Maranello team’s development plan:
“We know that we stopped development on our car quite early, focussing instead on 2023” – Mattia Binotto explained – “Somehow, I’m not too concerned by the rate of development because I know when we stopped developing. Mercedes have developed the car more than us while we stopped, so I’m not too worried about them. Surely there would have been more potential to be extracted, but there was not the financial availability of the budget cap to do it,” – the Scuderia Ferrari team principal concluded, ahead of the last two races of the current championship.
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