For several weeks, the attention of media and fans has been focused on the events related to the infringements of the Formula 1 financial regulation by Red Bull and Aston Martin. A sad and passive end of the season that puts economic aspects before the sports news that are difficult to understand for the general public.
The historic Anglo-Saxon ability in being able to achieve a competitive advantage through the interpretation of the technical regulation has evidently been extended to the financial sector. The absurd timing between the infringement and the sanction gives the sporting result the legitimate doubt that it could have been achieved with the help of the overspending breach under the F1 cost cap regulations.
A context in which the engineering genius coexists with the perpetual suspicion that it may be the result of the greater use of economic resources compared to the competition. The new budget cap discipline casts huge shadows on the results achieved on track in 2021 and this season. The incredible progress of Red Bull, which annihilated the competition, could be the result of the overspending reported in the last world championship report.
If before the summer break the comparison with Ferrari seemed balanced, from the Belgian Grand Prix the team of Milton Keynes appeared absolutely unstoppable in terms of race pace. With the world championship won by Max Verstappen in Japan, the Anglo-Austrian team’s consecutive victories rise to seven. If for Red Bull 2022 could be the best season in its short history, the Ferrari season, data in hand, is a film that has already been seen.
Analyzing the data allows to provide an objective view of the observed phenomenon and clears the field of any subjective interpretations. In the last six seasons, the historic Scuderia Ferrari team has designed at least three winning single-seaters in the first part of the season: the SF70H, the SF71H and the F1-75.
The three jewels of Maranello share the same performance parable: dominant start, central phase of the competitive season, final involution. The return after the summer break was always marked by a loss of performance against the competition, Mercedes (in the two-year period 2017-2018, ed.) and now Red Bull. The performance of the teams in the five races following the summer break in the 2017, 2018 and 2022 seasons was examined.
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The “cold” numbers show incredible similarities despite the fact that the drivers, many engineers and above all the technical regulations have changed. The much-discussed budget cap may have affected the distribution of upgrades over the season, however the declining performance of the Maranello team suggests other hypotheses.
The loss of performances could be due to ineffective updates compared to those of the competition. The age-old problem of data correlation seemed to be a bad memory of the recent past, however the F1-75 after the substantial upgrade made its debut at the Spanish Grand Prix could not keep up with the RB18.
The originality of the technical design of the F1-75 could be so extreme as to leave little room for development as explained by FormulaUnoAnalisiTecnica, a hypothesis supported by the continuous search for greater aerodynamic efficiency in a project that has its main strength in the aerodynamic load. Since the Belgian Grand Prix, Ferrari has not been able to replicate the excellent management of tire degradation.
At the last Japanese Grand Prix, even in wet conditions, Charles Leclerc’s intermediate tire wear was so big that the front treads seemed completely slick. In the central sector of Suzuka, the time gap between Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen was really huge. Note that after Charles Leclerc’s initial laps, performance plummeted sharply.
The three seasons compared in which Ferrari could fight for the title have little in common from the point of view of the management, the drivers and the technical regulations. However, the result is practically the same and cannot be a coincidence. Whatever the reason for Ferrari’s recurrent involution in the second half of the season, it is clear that it has an identical matrix.
The hope is that this dynamic is due to methodologies and infrastructures which only need to be refined. For the historic Italian team there are still four more rounds to reverse a worrying trend in view of 2023.
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