The Ferrari F1 engine of the next world championship seems to be the Prancing Horse’s weapon to move up the rankings. The data that emerged from the Maranello test bench are apparently very encouraging. Will it be enough to get back to fighting for the win against Mercedes and Red Bull? Fabiano Vandone spoke on the subject at Pit-Talk microphones.
In view of the 2021 F1 season, Ferrari needs more power from the power unit. After the “unclear” agreement between Maranello and the FIA in 2019, Ferrari has been heavily penalized during this season. The SF1000 was among the most difficult cars to drive in this world championship also due to the lack of HP on the engine. Only on rare occasions (Turkey for example) did the car show a good level of competitiveness despite the power deficit.
In many GPs this year, the Prancing Horse technicians had to unload a lot of wings on the SF1000 to make up for the power deficit of the Ferrari F1 engine.
All this penalized the driveability of the car, as well as the correct functioning of the tires on the red.
For 2021, the Maranello technicians are working hard to close the gap with their opponents.
The new power-unit has been running on the bench for several months already, and the results reported so far seem to give excellent signals. On the topic of power-unit, Fabiano Vandone spoke to Pit-Talk microphones. The Chrono GP driver spoke about the new Ferrari engine, stating that the step compared to this year’s is really significant:
“We must be optimistic, the bank’s results are giving extraordinary performances. Ferrari was limited by the federation between 2019 and 2020, and this caused considerable damage. Now they have rebuilt an engine thanks also to the regulation that allows it and has made a double jump: the first to recover what it took away, and the second for the technological redesign. ” – he said, as reported by f1sport.it.
The goal of the red team’s technicians is to get back a Ferrari F1 engine capable of becoming the reference point in the circus again. Clearly a more powerful engine will not be enough for Ferrari to return to fighting on equal terms with Mercedes and Red Bull, as underlined by Vandone:
“We must not think of a Ferrari engine that closes the gap with Mercedes. But that reduces it a lot. Having more power can generate more downforce and improve tire use, all of which this year has misled the SF-1000 project. “
Already in 2019 it was seen how much the extra power of the Maranello power-unit helped the red to emerge on the track, despite an SF90 with aerodynamic and chassis deficiencies. The three victories obtained (Spa, Monza and Singapore) in 2019 were the result of the Ferrari super engine.
Therefore, the Maranello team must focus a lot on the 2021 engine, also considering that the regulation will prohibit modifying the cars during the winter, except for some minor changes. But on the other hand, Mercedes, Honda and Renault will certainly not stand by and watch! The gap of the Ferrari power-unit is large to make up for compared to the Mercedes engine above all. But the fact that the Maranello technicians have been working on the new engine for several months gives hope. Then another thing to say is the following: worse than that you can only go back!
