Scuderia Ferrari F1 team principal Mattia Binotto says the gains from the 2022 F1 engine are the biggest he has managed in over 25 years.
Ferrari bounced back from a difficult two-year F1 season to return to race-winning form in 2022, scoring a 1-2 finish at the season opener in Bahrain and picking up three more victories in the first half of the season.
A key factor in Ferrari’s return to form has been an improvement to its F1 engine, which has allowed the team to close a huge performance gap to cars powered by Mercedes, Honda and Renault over the past few years.
It was difficult to know just how good the Ferrari F1-75 would be up until the season opener, but the engine numbers released by Maranello showed that Ferrari had taken a big step forward.
“We were clearer about the power unit because we knew where we were with the power unit because the regulations were consistent,” he told Mattia Binotto.
“In terms of the power unit, we set big numbers in terms of targets. The capacity we developed last season for 2022 was something we hadn’t seen at Maranet in over 25 years.”
“It shows how capable the team has been. In terms of the power unit, it’s been great.”
Ferrari’s advance comes after a development freeze in response to the coronavirus pandemic and pressure to cut costs, hampering engine performance through 2020.
The impact was particularly pronounced in 2020, when Ferrari plummeted to its worst championship finish in 40 years.
This was due to an investigation into Ferrari’s 2019 F1 power unit and subsequent crackdown on FIA engine regulations resulting from an undisclosed settlement.
Despite the impressive achievements Ferrari has made with its F1 engine this year, the team has struggled with reliability at times. Charles Leclerc retired twice while leading due to F1 power unit problems, while team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr. suffered engine failure while running third in Austria.
Asked if the reliability issue was the result of pushing too much performance for 2022 because development was frozen, Mattia Binotto said: “I don’t know if it’s gone too far. Boosting performance is never enough. Because it’s not,” he replied.
“Certainly, we prioritize performance over reliability. What does that mean? Maybe we didn’t have enough homologation plans.”
“More than that, for power units, like anything else, there are limits on dynamo times, and those limits have affected the results. It’s simply a dynamo effort multiplied for both.”
“We are limited by dyno time, so when it comes to September, October, November and December, we don’t have to choose for ourselves. There is no doubt that
“But it could have been frozen for four seasons, so we knew it was important to bring back the gap, because reliability can always be fixed later.”
Mattia Binotto felt the emergence of new power unit problems at the track this season was part of the normal process throughout the season.
“The experience of failing on the racetrack, which is not a fully known problem compared to the bench, could be causing problems simply because we are adding experience to a very green project. explained Mattia Binotto.
“With all the peculiarities of the racetrack compared to the bench, it’s just learning the product. I think that was expected. I’m not surprised at all.”
