Power unit and downforce: how Ferrari improved in 2021. How Ferrari improved in 2021.

The 2021 Formula 1 Championship started with a spectacular Bahrain Grand Prix, as Mercedes and Red Bull battled until the last lap for the race win. The Milton Keynes team comes out of this race not fully satisfied with the fact that despite having the fastest car it has not managed to bring Verstappen to the top step of the podium.

A good performance was also shown by Ferrari which in qualifying proved to have the potential to play the role of third force. The Power Unit has certainly grown a lot and the car has adapted well to the new rules which have reduced rear load. On the other hand, the rear of the SF1000 has never worked properly so these downforce cuts have certainly created fewer problems than Mercedes.

How was the 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix for Ferrari?
The SF21 is undoubtedly a step forward compared to the 2020 single-seater. This year’s car can fight in the middle of the pack and if well developed it will be able to fight for third position in the constructors’ standings. There is no chance of getting into the front fight because Mercedes and Red Bull still have too big an advantage especially in racing conditions. After the fourth place obtained by Charles Leclerc in qualifying, the Monegasque driver had to settle for the sixth position in the race with Carlos Sainz who finished in eighth position. It is not to be considered a negative result given how much the SF1000 had suffered a few months ago on this track.

Mattia Binotto is also aware of this that the road taken is the right one given that they managed to find the correlation of the data between track and the wind tunnel that will be very useful for the construction of the 2022 car: “The car behaves on track as we expected and I mustcthat this, compared to last year, was the first step forward. This is the basis on which to build next year’s developments and car. At the level of working methodology and tools at Maranello we certainly made some improvements and, therefore, qualifying was not very surprising, but a good starting point. Red Bull and Mercedes today are stronger cars than us and fighting for the podium becomes difficult unless something happens between them. We can certainly fight to be third force in the Constructors’championship.” – he said.

Now it will be important to see how this SF21 adapts to other types of circuits and we will be able to understand this already in Imola where we will see the first updates on the car. Ferrari will bring various developments of the car to these first races which will end with the latest evolution package that will make its debut at the Spanish GP.