An exercise for the end of the year: making predictions for the immediate future and for the coming months that await Scuderia Ferrari. The team led by Mattia Binotto, regardless of how the Jeddah and Abu Dhabi races will end, will soon put on the showcase a satisfactory season, much better than the disaster of 2020. And it will probably be able to take home a third place in the constructors’ standings which was not at all obvious in beginning of the year.
Fresh air (and money) will therefore enter the demoralized Ferrari environment. Not bad for a team that will likely end another year without a win and with just a few podiums. But also with the awareness that many parts of the “package” already work well. The driver line-up of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, the car reliability, the improvement of the power unit and the effectiveness of the chassis and rear suspension are sure starting points for the construction of next year’s single-seater.
The circuits in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it must be said immediately, do not seem at all favorable to Ferrari. The SF21 gave its best on city circuits, or in the slow Hungarian track, while it was not at all at ease on the fast circuits.
Everything suggests that next Sunday Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will certainly not have a bolt of lightning in their hands, among the very fast S of the new track in Jeddah. The fact of running at night, in mild temperatures, is not an advantage. The red car works well with soft tires and high temperatures, but has never found the right operating window on hard compounds.
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In Abu Dhabi at least the compounds provided will be the softest possible. But Yas Marina has always been a taboo for Ferrari, starting with the terrible debut in 2010. The changes to the circuit take away some slow parts where the car could have been at ease. No, not even in the Persian Gulf is a particularly lively pony to be expected.
Ferrari already has a good overall balance, but what it lacks was seen well in Qatar a week ago: downforce. In short, it will be essential not to mistake the conception of the car floor, which from next year will again be profiled to develop the Venturi effect.
The regulation for 2022 is quite binding, and it is difficult to expect revolutionary solutions. However, the Ferrari recovery will necessarily have to start from there, or rather from an optimal exploitation of the ground effect.
Another little publicized but by no means negligible regulatory aspect is related to the geometry of the suspension. In recent years, many teams have adopted the “pivot” solution. In practice, the strut was not pivoted at the end of the upright, but higher up, through the interposition of an additional bracket.
This arrangement allowed the front a rather pronounced variation of the camber during the steering phase, with consequent adjustment of the tire footprint and better grip. Ferrari has never developed this solution, and it is not excluded that certain problems in cornering and tire wear may have been caused by it. The news is that in the future the use of the pivot will be banned, which is to say that Ferrari finally sees an element on which it was not strong at all disappearing from the field.
Study of the profiled floor, optimal exploitation of the ground effect, improvement of the front suspension. These are the keys to Ferrari’s future success. They are all “study subjects” in which the teams start at par … Good luck then, and may it be a fruitful winter for the Maranello team.
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