Mattia Binotto in examining the 2022 season admitted that Ferrari blocked the development of the F1-75 before its rivals in the awareness that second place in the Constructors’ championship would not have escaped the redhead, so the attention of the technical office was concentrated exclusively on the 2023 car.
A risky choice that required a good dose of courage, given that even the confirmation of the vice-champion role conquered by Charles Leclerc only came in Abu Dhabi, after the one-two finish by Mercedes in Brazil which sent shivers down the spines of the Cavallino men.
Mattia Binotto, Ferrari Team Principal
Photo by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images
Since September, the Scuderia has put its heart and soul into the 675, the design code for next year’s F1, because the Red Bull RB18 with Max Verstappen had already seemed impregnable for some time…
“I think there were some factors – explained Binotto -. The first was that in terms of development, Red Bull had a clear path, which was to reduce the weight of the car, which was not our case. And somehow they knew where to intervene to extract performance from the single-seater”.
“For us it was more complicated because the development went through aerodynamic developments and the concept of the car. Looking back, the development we did was certainly not enough. We stopped very early, not only by choice but also for cost reasons”.
At the start of the season, Ferrari brought a more “mature” single-seater to the track than the others, the result of the previous two years of development and, perhaps, concentrated developments more in the first part of the season to support the fact that the F1-75 it was considered the reference single-seater of the Circus, before Red Bull took off collecting 15 seasonal successes with Verstappen.
What Binotto didn’t say, but it’s certainly interesting in view of 2023, is that this year’s development budget didn’t end with the F1-75, but the remaining portion was transferred to next year’s car.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
In Maranello they had taken a risk, betting that second place in the Constructors and Leclerc’s title of vice-world champion would come anyway, preferring to add economic resources to the 2023 project.
The internal numbers speak of a significantly better red car than the F1-75 in the wind tunnel. Data that feeds a certain optimism about the next car and that may in some way have curbed the desire of the president, John Elkann, to change the top of the Racing Department. If more resources have been invested than those envisaged in the two years, it is possible that the development process could also be more spread out over the course of the season…
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