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Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto discussed car development, admitting Maranello never shifted focus away from 2022.
Scuderia Ferrari has already conquered more than double the points that it had obtained in 2021. Although the performance level is still not up to the expected standard for the most winning team in the history of Formula 1, Maranello showed the will to progress and get out of a difficult situation.
2022 will be a crucial year for the Ramping Horse, which has repeatedly stated (and promised fans) that the objective is to use the regulations’ change to go back to fight for the title. Next season all the pressure will be on Ferrari to deliver and regain its place at the top.
Hence, Team Principal Mattia Binotto admitted to Motorsport.com that the team never shifted its focus away from 2022, even though that might have caused the 2021 season to be difficult: “We never really developed the current car. We introduced a couple of developments at the very start of the season and that’s it.”
In 2020, Ferrari had particularly suffered the lack of performance by its power unit. As a matter of fact, the most important upgrade of the 2021 season came from the introduction of a new engine: “Except for the power unit later on but the power unit, again that was a development in view of 2022, so all our efforts from the very start of the season has always been the 2022 car, we never compromised it. So, let’s say that it never came into our mind even to at some stage try to penalise 2022 at the benefit of 2021.”
With only two races to go, Ferrari is now the favorite to place third in the Constructors’ Championship as it’s now 39,5 points ahead of McLaren, which only conquered 4 points from the last tripleheader. Mattia Binotto admits the results are up to the development of the team as a whole: “We knew that we could have fought for the third place at the start of this season, we knew it could have been very tight but we knew that our main objective in 2021 was not third place but to try to improve in all the details as a team and third place has simply been an output of it.”
Surely, the progress was effectively shown in every area in 2021 from the pitstops to the strategies, to better communications with the drivers and a constant learning process: “I think if today we are reaching third place it’s because the team, the way they are working at various weekends has certainly improved a lot since the start of the season and not because the car itself has developed. “
“I think the race team since the start of the season has made a lot of progress. It has made a lot of progress in terms of strategy, the way we manage, the communication with the drivers, the understanding of what we are doing. It has improved a lot in terms of tyre management. I think that the team since Paul Ricard developed a lot of small tools, methodologies to try to do it better.”
The French Grand Prix was indeed a key moment during the season, considering it Ferrari’s worst weekend in 2021. Since then, the Ramping Horse was able to almost always come up with a solution to its problems during the weekends and both drivers delivered brilliantly, even conquering two pole positions.
“If I look at where we were last year, sixth, with little points in the championship, I think we made the most of we could do with the current regulations and most of the car had also very limited opportunities of development as well about the car in 2021. So overall, I think that the team has made great progress with what was possible to do, and for that I am so happy because yes, the third position is a great output of the efforts.”
Headline Image: Ferrari
