On paper, for Scuderia Ferrari the 2021 Formula 1 season was a big improvement as compared to the previous championship, which represented the Italian side’s worst performance in the last four decades. The SF21 cars of Carlos Sainz – who finished third in the last round of the 2021 season, at the Yas Marina circuit, and teammate Charles Leclerc were able to to score an impressive total of 323.5 points between them, 192.5 more than the Maranello team could achieve in 2020. In the drivers’ championship, Carlos Sainz was equally impressive by taking P4 behind the duo line-up of Mercedes and Red Bull, thus scoring his best ever finish, two places ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc, who clocked two poles positions last year, in Monaco and Baku.
Ferrari are not yet the best and they are still a way from it. But they are making steps forward in multiple areas – and Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto reckons that bodes well. “It’s step by step and it is by recovering such a gap you may create solid foundations for the future.” – he said a few weeks ago.
But just what can we expect from the Italian side in the 2022 Formula 1 season? Will Ferrari be able to challenge Mercedes and Red Bull at least for race wons on some tracks? Andrew Frankel reckons the Maranello team will thrive under the new 2022 Formula 1 regulations, as he explained in a recent article for motorsportmagazine.com:
“What is so significant about Ferrari’s return to form is that it found huge amounts of missing pace right at the end of a regulatory era, when the rules have been around so long you’d presume there was very little development potential left for them to permit. Yet Ferrari found it.” – the editor of Motor Sport explained – “I also think that in Carlos Sainz and Leclerc, Ferrari has the best driver line up on the grid. Or, perhaps if George Russell shapes up and Lewis Hamilton comes back, that should be ‘had’. While I’d not say either has done enough to yet stand comparison with Lewis or Max Verstappen, together I don’t think any other team has more talent in the garage.” – he added.
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The work Scuderia Ferrari have done on their power unit over the last year is maybe one of the most impressive and promising aspects:
“Then there’s the subjective stuff, less easy to quantify, but no less important for that. Ferrari has the wind its sails. More than any other team around it, it is in the ascendant. Confidence has returned to Maranello and, with it, belief that the red cars can be the best in the world once more. Of course there is the great regulatory unknown: with such a significant change in the rules, it is always possible that someone will find a way of interpreting them to their advantage that hasn’t occurred to anyone else. But experience shows that most of the time, it’s the big teams with the best resources that such upheaval favours most, and Ferrari is undoubtedly among them. And while the budget cap will have clipped wings to an extent, it shouldn’t be enough to upset what was the status quo until relatively recently. Or maybe I’m just hoping too much. For reasons I have never been adequately able to explain even to myself, I just want Ferrari to be frontrunners. I have no trouble assessing their road product with the necessary gimlet eye, but when it comes to their racing cars, I am always happy to see them at the sharp end. So maybe this is all a triumph of blind hope over objective assessment. But I don’t think so.” – Andrew Frankel concluded.
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