Carlos Sainz Jr, Ferrari, Imola, 2022

Ferrari plan ‘main upgrade soon after Miami’

2022 F1 season

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Ferrari will bring track-specific new parts to next week’s race in Miami followed by a more significant upgrade afterwards.

Team principal Mattia Binotto said the team will optimise its car for next weeks inaugural race on the Miami International Autodrome, which features several long acceleration zones.

“We’ll have a few new parts on the car because first Miami is a high-speed circuit compared to the ones we’ve had so far,” said Binotto at Imola. “In terms of downforce, we will run something different compared to what we have here.

“Hopefully that level of downforce we bring to Miami, we are quite confident it’s quite an efficient one. But we know as well that got a good medium-low downforce package as well that will be competitive.

“It will be a completely new track, a new challenge. Quite interesting, I’m pretty curious to be there. So we will adapt our car in terms of downforce level, which is important.”

The team also has an eye on the superior behaviour of Red Bull’s RB18 at speed, which ‘porpoises’ less noticeably than the F1-75.

“We’re still working on the porpoising which as you see is quite visible,” said Binotto. “We’ve got it certainly more than the one of Red Bull and in there there’s some performance potential that we need to try to get.

“So this is the main one for Miami but let me say that the main upgrades will come soon after.”

Charles Leclerc said the two cars are so closely matched the balance of power between them is being dictated by how well they suit each track.

“With Red Bull it’s either one weekend they are stronger, another we are stronger and it’s been the case from the beginning of the season where it’s like this,” said Leclerc. “In Bahrain we were stronger, in Australia, we were stronger and in the other two they were stronger.

“So I still feel like we are there more or less and it’s track dependent who of the two are coming out on top. So I don’t think there are any significant differences yet. But yes, they were a bit stronger than we were this weekend.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...
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10 comments on “Ferrari plan ‘main upgrade soon after Miami’”

  1. Although not as high-speed as Jeddah.
    However, bringing developments for the upcoming event is understandable regardless.
    Montmelo will probably still be the choice for substantial upgrades.

    1. They should be carefull with porpoises as Miami has a lot of long straights things can break so not only they should reduce drag but take a look at there suppension i think they use push rod as Red Bull pull rod.

  2. Chris Horton
    28th April 2022, 8:17

    Fingers crossed it brings a step in performance.

    Imola felt like Red Bull were quite a bit better to me, I hope the drivers and team are right saying it’s just track specific.

    1. It’s difficult to tell whether that was just down to RB’s upgrades or the sprint format mixed together with a wet practice session. Maybe Ferrari was too confident after comfortably leading the field in FP1 in wet conditions or they were expecting more rain during the race and set up the car too soft. They did lose most of their time through the fast corners (exit of Tamburello, first part of Villeneuve and Piratella). Leclerc was pretty decent on the inters, consistently lapping faster than Pérez and would’ve likely jumped the RB, if the pit crew didn’t mess up the pit stop.
      Apparently Ferrari also turned down the power on Leclerc’s car (which cost him around 0.1 sec), because they found an anomality on Sainz’s first PU just before the weekend.
      Barcelona should give us a clearer picture of how the competitive order has changed compared to the first three races.

      1. I am sure they can’t turn down the power on their engine as they are locked or this is done before qualiflier. But that the first i hear Ferarri has engine problems.

        1. @macleod
          The PU components which were homologated at the start of the season – with the exception of the MGU-K, CE and ES that can still be developed till September 2022 – will be frozen till the end of the 2025 season. During this period only reliability fixes will be permitted. Teams are required to carry the same qualifying modes into races because the engine modes are now part of parc fermé rules. There is nothing in the rules that states that they must carry their most powerful mode.

          Ferrari were believed to be on a reliability program with regard to their PU since the start of the season. They will start using their higher PU modes in Spain. Honda did the same thing last year when they detuned their PU after Bahrain and resumed to using their high modes once reliability was sorted.

          1. @tifoso1989 False reports according to Binotto.

            “During the press conference, the Ferrari boss denied the reports that the Maranello team increased the power after evaluating the reliability data. He explained that they worked on reliability over the winter and have been running the maximum power since the start of the 2022 Formula 1 championship.”

            https://scuderiafans.com/mattia-binotto-reflects-on-top-speed-differences-between-red-bull-and-ferrari-in-2022/

  3. Let’s see what Ferrari has to offer in terms of upgrades in the coming weeks. Italian media are reporting Ferrari are going to introduce an ERS upgrade for either Miami or Barcelona and a reliability upgrade, which allows them to run higher power modes, on the ICE for Barcelona on Leclerc’s car (Sainz already switched to his 2nd one at Imola).
    Barcelona will probably be the big aero-upgrade show, as the teams already have data to compare from there from the first test. Given Ferrari hasn’t put any visual updates on the car since the first day of testing two months ago, I expect a big update from them when they hit the track in Barcelona. That is of course, if they sorted out the porpoising by then, as updates only make sense if you know why the car is behaving like it does. Otherwise you are only confusing yourselves.

  4. not sure why everyone is praising RBR for Imola performance?!! It was a wet race , no DRS for half of the race plus not many spots to overtake. Yes Ferrari did a poor start and Ferrari did some mistakes, but in dry conditions I would think the results would of been much closer and maybe a Ferrari win. Seems like all the F1 media are pushing for RBR big time and all the articles are pro RBR but at the end Ferrari are still 1st place with a car similar that was brought in Bahrain.

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