Austrian motorsport executive Toto Wolff admitted that Scuderia Ferrari has a good chance of being strong in the first part of the 2022 Formula 1 season taking into consideration the development opportunities, as well as the Maranello team decision to focus on 2022 a lot earlier than Red Bull and Mercedes. These could become key factors which could give Scuderia Ferrari an early advantage in the 2022 campaign.
Aware of the important regulation changes which will be introduced for the 2022 championship, Scuderia Ferrari decided to sacrifice most of their 2021 resources and development in order to work mainly on the project for this season, as the Maranello team knew it would be impossible to challenge for race wins in 2021, while Red Bull and Mercedes spent 2021 fighting for the Formula 1 titles.
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One other important aspect is the fact that Scuderia Ferrari benefited from more wind-tunnel hours than their main rivals due to the very poor 2020 season, which made Toto Wolff believe that the Italian side could be front-runners early on in the next championship.
“We absolutely have to [assume] they will be in the mix next year, because they’ve had more aerodynamic development scope because they had a bad season last year,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff explained – “They are a great entity, they have all the resources that are needed and, therefore, we absolutely have them on the radar. Not only Ferrari, there’s a few other teams which can do really well next year.” – the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team Principal concluded.
