The resignation handed in by Mattia Binotto, who will officially end his time with Scuderia Ferrari on December 31, implies that on this date his successor as Team Principal of the Italian side will already be known.
In fact, this will most likely coincide not only with the official confirmation of a new team boss from January 1st, but also with a substantial redistribution of the positions held solely by Mattia Binotto in the last few years.
It is in fact probable, based on recent reports in the Italian and international newspapers, that a clear division will be adopted at least between the team’s technical and managerial roles.
This means that a technical director would be in charge of supervising both design departments, chassis and power unit, while each would keep their respective managers. In short, there would represent a rather big change and a new approach as compared to the current hierarchical structure in the Maranello technical area.
This new organizational structure may inevitably have consequences on the development programme of the Ferrari Formula 1 challenger for the 2023 championship. However, for now the rumours emarging from within Maranello regarding the potential of the next year’s car continue to remain reassuring, especially when in comes to the Ferrari engine.
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Throughout the whole 2022 Formula 1 campaign, mostly in the second part of the year, the Italian side has been consistently focusing on changing the design of some power unit elements, most specifically the ones that had been the root causes of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz retirements in the first half of the season.
The Ferrari power unit area not only analysed – and identified the best solutions for some quality control procedures, but also looked into the ideal options for improving, using stress analysis tools, mainly the upper area of the internal combustion engine, fixing at the same time the main issues that led to the power unit problems this year.
Most importantly, Ferrari has worked on developing a new version of the TJI (Turbulent Jet Injection, an advancement in the air-fuel combustion process) system. The current TJI system encountered issues in the initial phase of the combustion chambers, and had induced a high thermal and mechanical stress, that transferred directly to neighbouring engine parts, like the turbocharger and the MGU-H.
Despite the power unit development freeze until the end of the 2025 Formula 1 season, these modifications are permitted as an exception to the current rules and regulations, which allow F1 teams to introduce reliability developments. Reliability then gives the possibility of using more extreme mappings for the engine power, which in itself means a significant performance gain in terms of lap time.
The performance of the Ferrari power unit is, based to reported comments from Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner at the recent Bandini award ceremony in Brisighella, ‘like a rocket’, with the Ferrari-powered team confident it will also be able to capitalize on the entire potential of the 2023 power unit without fear of sudden technical issues.
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