Carlos Sainz Jr, Ferrari, Circuit Zandvoort, 2022

Ferrari bringing special Monza wing in bid to stop Verstappen’s winning run

2022 Italian Grand Prix

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Ferrari will bring a special, low-downforce rear wing for their home race at Monza this weekend as they aim to halt Max Verstappen’s run of four consecutive wins.

Despite the budget cap putting pressure on teams to develop fewer race-specific parts, Ferrari engineered a special wing to deliver maximum straight-line speed at F1’s fastest tracks. However they opted not to use it at Spa-Francorchamps last month, where Red Bull scored a dominant victory.

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto said the win “was not the right choice considering the tyre degradation and high temperature” at Spa.

“For Monza, certainly we run a different type of wing, lower drag,” he confirmed. “So the speed itself will not be the concern.”

Following last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, Binotto admitted he was worried about the team’s recent slump in form. Over the past four races they have been out-scored not just by Red Bull, but also Mercedes.

“My main concern after the race of today is that it’s three races in a row that we do not have the pace on Sunday,” he told RaceFans and other media after the grand prix, drawing a comparison to their performance at the similar Hungaroring.

“In Hungary and this weekend we have a good quali, we had a quali which has been competitive, but then the race itself, we are not competitive enough and that makes life certainly a lot more difficult. Not only because we cannot fight for the win with Max, but because then we do not have the pace as well to keep the Mercedes behind.

George Russell, Mercedes and Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Circuit Zandvoort, 2022
Gallery: 2022 Dutch Grand Prix in pictures
“It’s now three races in a row that we are not at what should be our potential and what we have proved to have as the potential of the car since the start of the season. That’s something that we need to address as soon as possible because there are few races which are left from now to the end of the season.

“We still are looking for victories and our intention is to try to win at every single race, and that includes Monza.”

Binotto hopes the home support will spur the team on to their first win since the Austrian Grand Prix two months earlier.

“After the Covid, it’s great still to have all our Tifosi in the grandstands,” he said. “That would be important for us, because they will certainly cheer for us and boost us as a team, which right now we need to find some good results as well for this period.”

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Ida Wood
Often found in junior single-seater paddocks around Europe doing journalism and television commentary, or dabbling in teaching photography back in the UK. Currently based...

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46 comments on “Ferrari bringing special Monza wing in bid to stop Verstappen’s winning run”

  1. I like that picture with the merc and the redbull, big rear wing difference.
    Perhaps Ferrari is on red bull

  2. Where did they find the budget for that?

    I guess it is not an issue if it is their own budget.

    1. Where did they find the budget for that?

      They budgeted for it at the beginning of the season.

      And assisted by the mid-season increase…

    2. No this things are planned you hear about a Monza wing or a Monaco wing (reversed) teams knows on which Circuit to use the right wing and some circuits the wing is special maded for Monza (super low drag). So those wings are already in the budget of all teams.

      I wonder if Red Bull is using the Spa wing or the Monza wing.

  3. I bet it either doesn’t fit; falls off, or explodes mid-race.

    #FerrariBloopers

    1. would you like more wing or less wing, question?

    2. That’s all part of the plan. It falls off and explodes on lap 20, thereby reducing drag and causing a bonus safety car. Ferrari then pit for inters, swear a bit, and come out at the back of the pack.

    3. Imagine how incompetent the other 8 teams below Ferrari in the championship must be.

      But somehow, that’s rarely brought up and people still happily go along with McLaren and Alpine ‘building the team’ and being on a ‘multi-year plan to win a title’, despite there being absolutely zero indication over the last decade of that being even remotely likely.

      1. Ferrari have designed a great car.

        They just can’t seem to do any of the other stuff associated with running an F1 team!

        1. Alpine on top of that sometimes put alonso on bad strategies, ruining his qualis.

        2. At yet somehow Ferrari has won more races this year than McLaren, Renault and Williams in the last decade. Combined.

          It’s fair enough to criticize Ferrari when they make mistakes. But that’s what it is, mistakes. The rest of the teams though… who even knows what to call that. They’re effectively filler on the grid. They’re uncompetitive year after year, and remain totally dependent on the manufacturer teams for their engines.

          Mock Ferrari for having a new rear wing, sure. But imagine what a team like McLaren has been spending all those hundreds of millions on for over a decade. Every year they’re spending these ridiculous amounts of money. And for what? A single fluke win; and now they’re even getting rid of the guy who won them that race!

          1. and now they’re even getting rid of the guy who won them that race!

            And they’re keeping the guy that would have won that same race if Dan hadn’t been around. The guy that has vastly outperformed him.

          2. @mattds Yes, obviously. That bit was meant as a bit of a joke. It’s quite obvious McLaren is right to get rid of Ricciardo as he’s performed very poorly in their cars.

            The overall point however is that McLaren has barely been relevant in F1 for a decade. A time in which they’ve spend hundreds of millions of pounds on their facilities, designs, development, drivers, and who knows what else. And Ricciardo’s one-time win is all they have to show for it.

          3. That is true, but while they have spent a lot, their budgets have been nowhere near Ferrari’s, so Ferrari is always going to be a more prominent target when things are not going well.
            Williams even more – it is clear that Williams are nowhere near what they used to represent, but they are pretty much trying to make do with what they have. I mean, there are some excuses there. Alpine, where I mostly think they are wrong is that they have been trying to come to the top with a decidedly lower budget. But they’re basically fighting for fourth with a budget that is clearly below the top 3 budgets so they are where you would expect them to be. Maybe the cost cap will even it out more but it’s clear that the top 3 have used the unlimited budgets of the past years and put some of that towards 2022 and it will take some time to even that out.

            Now Ferrari… They have always had the budget, so they can’t hide behind that. They have now produced a car that is up there, or at least was every bit up there before the summer break. And what do they do? They throw it on all accounts. Strategy. Pit stops. Reliability. Driver errors. There hasn’t been a single department that has executed even close to what you need to win a championship with closely matched cars. They have squandered their great car and there’s no telling at all whether they will have a competitive car next year.

            So yeah. I think it’s pretty normal for people to be highly critical.

    4. petebaldwin (@)
      6th September 2022, 15:55

      “We still believe the decision to go with a high downforce setup in order to be fast through the chicanes was the right one. It’s easy to criticise from the outside.”

    5. Guess what: Chance of rain will be so high they’ll need extra ride height to prevent aquaplaning and wing to compensate the lost downforce. Ferrari will add a rudder to steer the car when it becomes a boat.

  4. Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto said the win “was not the right choice considering the tyre degradation and high temperature” at Spa.

    That’s what’s wrong with Ferrari this year :)

    1. I had a chuckle at that typo as well. It does explain a lot about the season!

      1. If the author was in a joking mood it could also not be typo!

        1. Probably due to a translation issue with the Italian Bell Cheque.

    2. Red Bull gives you wins.

  5. Let’s hope they don’t put it on backwards.

    1. Jonathan Parkin
      6th September 2022, 17:18

      They won’t as that will be a disqualification. One team in F3000 tried that already back in the day

      1. and what were they trying to achieve with that?

      2. Interesting. Someone please provide a link to the story.
        Or at least name the entrant and the race when they tried to do so :)

        1. Ok, I have found this:
          Wikipedia – 2002 F3000 International Season
          “Antônio Pizzonia was disqualified from second place at Monza in Italy for running a rear wing element upside-down.”

          At F1Technical.net the user “747heavy” told something about this in one of his posts:
          Even the lowest rear wing angle was too draggy for Monza, and by the rules it was not allowed to modify or remove it, so they fitted the beam wings upside down.
          It was faster on the straights, but he got disqualified for it after finishing 2nd in the race.

          Well, it was a bit less ballsy story, than I expected, they only fitted the beam wings upside down, not the rear wing :) but still an interesting one.

          At some simulators, for example at TCR-like (smaller touring cars) categories it is allowed to set a slightly negative angle for the rear wing. When I have seen that a few years before, initially I was suprised. But after some googling, some users told, that even that way there will be a good amount of downforce.

      3. They won’t as that will be a disqualification.

        That’s a rather bold statement considering we’re talking about Ferrari here…

  6. If the new wing doesn’t somehow include an entirely new pit wall team, then they won’t be stopping Max’s streak.

    1. The new wing will have a built in AI which provides the strategy, and the pit wall of the team only can override it via a switch what resembles some kind of box named after a mythological woman called “Pandora”.

  7. Ferrari weren’t able to beat RBR in the majority of races in the first part of the season where they did have the upper hand pace wise. It is out of question for me that they will be able to mount a serious challenge in RBR’s strongest circuit of the year.

    Binotto has been dishonestly repeating that Ferrari lacked pace compared to RBR in the last 3 races which is not true. Ferrari lacked pace compared to RBR only in Belgium. In Hungary Leclerc and despite being held up by Sainz was comfortably leading the race by 5s before the strategic harakiri. In Zandvoort, Leclerc was matching Verstappen’s pace earlier in his stints before running in tyre trouble.

    The TD039 has helped Mercedes get to the front, RBR and as suggested by Horner were not concerned and this is mainly thanks to their sophisticated rear suspension that was designed with porpoising in mind and no question that Ferrari were hit hard by it.

    The telemetry analysis between Max and Charles in the last 2 races showed a pattern shift. Ferrari used to held the upper hand out of the slow corners and in the high speed corners that requires peak downforce. RBR wasn’t lagging that much in those areas and was mighty on the straights. In the last 2 races RBR matched Ferrari in the slow and high speed corners and kept its advantage on the straights.

    Ferrari were baffled by the fact that Max was mighty in the second sector in Spa. The F1-75 is the best all around car that rides the curves even better than the RB18 by RBR’s own admission. Ferrari were able to produce a lot of consistent downforce under the floor in the central section of the car thanks to its novel sidepods design. The car was very balanced and easy to drive.

    Raising the car certainly lost Ferrari downforce and have caused the car to understeer and causing the tyres to go off quickly. The front suspension has been designed to work with major downforce levels that have suddenly disappeared and caused the front-end to lose the optimum contact with the ground.

    The new homologated hybrid part mounted in Belgium and the new wing that the team will bring in Monza are just smokescreen to deflect from the real Ferrari leadership issues in front of the tifosi and the top management that will be present. I certainly doubt if Toto or Horner were in charge a mid-season TD against their teams’ interests would have been issued.

    Horner didn’t have to enter a fight with the FIA when he exactly knows that the TD in question will not halt his team and will help eliminate theoretically the only threat to his team. Toto was the mastermind behind the TD which have brought Mercedes into contention.

    Binotto should go ASAP, he is a brilliant engine engineer but as leader he is incompetent to say the least. Ferrari should hire someone with guts not afraid from fighting Horner, Toto, Liberty and the FIA when necessary and provide clear vision with regard to the team’s ambitions. Horner, Toto, Briatore, Bernie… might not have brilliant CVs or intellectual capacity but the meeting point between all of them is that they are strong streetwise and that is what Ferrari need at the moment.

    1. This is not the first time Binotto skirted too close to the edges on the rules. It’s a habit that doesn’t go away. It’s risky, but it can work if the team is – as you rightly note – willing and able to counter the sly machinations of Wolff and prevent him from making the FIA work in Mercedes’ best interest. He successfully did it multiple times last year, and not even Horner could prevent it. Ferrari is just hopeless on this. It was the same back when Domenicali was the team principal. Every time the rules were ‘explained’ to the detriment of Ferrari they didn’t even offer the smallest of resistance.

      1. MichaelN,

        Spot on !

        I remember when Domenicali was in charge Renault was permitted to pass performance upgrades disguised as reliability fixes whenever they wanted. One time Ferrari has asked the FIA to implement a supplementary fuel tank similar to the one used in the Renault engine which was behind the penalty Seb got in qualifying in the 2012 Abu Dhabi GP.

        In that race it was judged that RBR failed to provide the 1L requirement for fuel check. RBR argued that 1L quantity was in the car and the FIA said that they have found less than that in the primary fuel tank. The trick was that the fuel was flowing between the two tanks to maintain an optimum balance of the car at all time. Ferrari that year were denied the exact same request that Renault was granted and the FIA argued that the Ferrari engine was reliable and didn’t need such fix.

        Wolff have been doing this to Ferrari countless times since they started showing pace in 2017. The SF70H was an excellent car that included many innovations that were taken away as a result of direct complains by Mercedes. Ferrari has been using a blown axle since 2015 to control the airflow round the front wheel. This solution was banned after a request of clarification from several teams led by Mercedes in the Canadian GP.

        Ferrari have been racing a floor using a large slot in the edge of the floor that draw Mercedes’s attention who argued that it helped the floor to flex under load. In Baku Ferrari were asked not to race with the floor in question.

        The oil burn saga that started in early 2015 when RBR raised suspicions about Mercedes PU, though the FIA only started to take the matter seriously when Toto blew the whistle about Ferrari who took the trickery to the next level and started using auxiliary oil tanks that helped them to deploy a more aggressive map in qualy and at the same time increase the reliability of their engine.

        In 2018, additional sensors were added to the Ferrari PU after request from clarification made by Wolff with regard to Ferrari ERS deployment. Mercedes were so keen to get the FIA unveil how Ferrari operated its auxiliaries within its PU by asking question after question thing that made Arrivabene mad because of Ferrari IP. It was revealed later that Ferrari were using a double battery pack to resolve the simultaneous issue of energy harvesting and deploying and that they have been using the system since 2014.

        With regard to this year’s TD039, it is rumoured that Ferrari have already spent all of their budget and cannot upgrade the car to cope with the TD in question that also could have a negative impact on the design of the 2023 car because Ferrari may have to redesign the entire sidepods area to cope with the change.

        1. In 2018, additional sensors were added to the Ferrari PU after request from clarification made by Wolff

          Toto and others had suggested that there was something “unusual” about the Ferrari ERS deployment, being able to continue after the point that Merc (and others) had run out.
          The requests for clarification actually came from Red Bull – last time I looked, there was no record of Toto ever having worked for RBR.
          The main point being that Ferrari got caught, had to change how they ran the car and lost out. That set them back for several years and gave RBR the chance to be the main challenger.
          The sad bit being that the FIA swept the results of the investigation under the carpet. While everyone knows they were doing wrong, the outcome of the official investigation is sealed.
          IIRC the secondary sensors were added – across the board – to compensate for interference, of unknown origin, that mysteriously blocked the telemetry from the primary sensors at intervals. The fact that the times of the interference matched the unexpected ERS deployment was pure coincidence, of course.

          1. SteveP,
            Apparently you didn’t check well ! The query was raised by James Allison after Lorenzo Sassi who was the former head of Ferrari PU department blew the whistle. Allison approached Whiting about the matter in Baku.

            The thing is why I perfectly remember that this particular query was made by Mercedes is that the FIA have actually mentioned Rossi as the whistle blowers which caused a lot of fuss because of the potential breach of whistle blowers regulations that could have brought the entire FIA in trouble.

            Thanks for the additional technical clarification.

            https://www.espn.ph/f1/story/_/id/23649087/fia-charlie-whiting-responds-toto-wolff-concerns-naming-mercedes-staff-ferrari-investigation

    2. I think Mexico will be Red Bulls strongest circuit as you need the aero without the drag but the thinner air means you need to put lots of wing and aero on it to have the same results.

      1. @macleod
        RBR have suffered engine wise from altitude in Austria unlike Ferrari. They could still be mighty in Mexico though Monza is the circuit that emphasizes the most the RB18 design concept which is all about aerodynamic efficiency.

        1. @tifoso1989 – i think you wrong Red Bull had tyre problems as they had they setup completly wrong and there tyres degrade was awefull. They had no engine problems during the race and Max has 2 engines who has 2 races on them so expect full power from them.

          1. I didn’t say they had engine issues (reliability), I said they suffered the altitude more than Ferrari. In other words they lost more power than Ferrari due to altitude. That what was rumoured after the race which doesn’t have anything to do with their set up issues.

  8. Looks like this is his job at stake. He must really be sweating.

  9. RedBull gives you wings :)

  10. I would love to see Ferrari win again but I cannot see them catching the Red Bull. Not down the long straights of Monza, new wing or not. The best they can do is probably damage limitation and hope they beat one or both of the Mercs to the finish.

    Baring anything unusual at least one driver on the podium would be an adequate result.

  11. It best be worth an extra second a lap, to account for the time loss when they much up their pit stop again.

  12. The fact I read the headline – then opened the article to read the jokes – I think says enough.

    1. You know, I did just the same. I was expecting to read something like “Ferrari wing works brilliantly, but fixing bolts shear off at first corner”.

  13. Mark in Florida
    7th September 2022, 19:06

    It doesn’t matter what kind of wing they use. They could strap rockets to the car to make it faster, still wouldn’t matter. They could be in the lead by a long ways, still wouldn’t matter, you know why? Because Binotto is still there. The life sucking negative force he generates would still cause them to lose the race. The pit wall is the problem not the driver’s not the car. The pit wall.

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