The Ferrari F1 team a had a decent showing in pre-season, clocking plenty of laps and showing good pace at Barcelona.
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Ahead of the second and final round of pre-season testing in Bahrain, most Formula 1 teams are working hard on upgrades. But the Ferrari F1 team are not among them.
The Scuderia had a decent showing in pre-season, clocking plenty of laps and showing good pace. This is despite not running at their full potential.
But this is exactly why the team will focus on optimising their current car instead of upgrading it, according to team principal Mattia Binotto.
“[Our car] will not be much different compared to what we have got. The first step for us is to optimise what we have,” said Binotto in Barcelona.
“We are still far from the best performance, not only because we are running high fuel, or not the best engine mode but simply because there is a lot to exploit on the car itself.
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“Let’s wait, let us see what the others will bring. Certainly, as Ferrari we are always concerned on upgrades of our competitors and I am pretty sure they will be very, very strong by [Bahrain].”
It is certainly an interesting approach to make, but one that is different to other teams. There’s already rumours that Mercedes will come out with a different looking car at Bahrain.
And Max Verstappen has publicly stated that the RB18 will look very different come the second run of pre-season.
However, Ferrari do seem confident in their car and understandably so.
What’s more, they used the first round of testing solely for data collection. And given the data the team has already got, the focus is to use that on the current car itself.
“I think in Barcelona, first session, [our objective] was to collect data as we said, try to understand the correlation, but when we go to Bahrain it will be very close to the first race of the season.
“We will all, I believe, try to simulate some race situations, quali simulations and we will try to extract some performance from the car itself.
“Certainly, in Bahrain, I think it will be more the performance; the relative competitiveness of the teams will be more clear.”
The second and final round of pre-season testing gets underway from March 10-12 at Sakhir. The first race of the 2022 F1 season will take place at the same venue in the following week.
