Why Ferrari F1-75 car was competitive again against Red Bull | 2022 Dutch GP. Why Ferrari F1-75 car was competitive again against Red Bull .

Last week at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, Ferrari had to make an important decision for the Belgian Grand Prix weekend: one hand there was the possibility of using the old low downforce rear wing, the one whcih was also seen on the F1-75 car at the Baku City Circuit, or either bring the updated version of that rear wing with a bit more downforce.

It was an honest issue given the fact that, despite the fast nature of the Spa-Francorchamps track, Ferrari they also had to be able to generate the necessary downforce in the second sector of the circuit, the most downforce-dependant section of the track.

This was not the case this weekend for the Dutch Grand Prix: when the F1-75 cars came out on the Zandvoort circuit on Friday, starting with FP1, a high-downforce rear wing was seen on the cars of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. This wing is characterised by a clearly visible spoon profile at the bottom of the wing, as explained by Technical Analyst Paolo Filisetti for RacingNews365.

This is a slightly modified version of the wing used at the Hungaroring in Budapest, with the central section of the horizontal beams being slightly higher. The balance that the Maranello team identified by using this settup allowed them to top the second free practice session with both cars and also show a race pace that on Friday was very close or even slightly better than that of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who was only able to finish eighth in FP2, despite the fact that he drove on used soft tyres.

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Following the first two free practice sessions at Zandvoort, it is clear that the correct correlation between the simulations, as performed back at the factory in Maranello, and the on-track practice data was immediately found, just as was the case for the most part of the 2022 Formula 1 season, except for the Spa race.

There were many races this year when we saw that the Italian side was able to find an immediate correlation, with just small adjustments needed to that solid base set-up, they were fast all weekend, as was the case at the Red Bull Ring a few weeks ago.