After the good feeling they left in pre-season testing, the first two races of 2022 seem to have clearly shown that Ferrari has got its car concept right. If last year the Italians fought against McLaren for third position in the constructors’ championship, now the team has taken that long-awaited step forward that allows them to have one of the strongest cars on the entire grid.
In this sense, there have been some rumors that those from Maranello , in some way, received a leak ahead of time of what the 2022 regulations would be like, which would have allowed them to start working on this new generation of single-seaters before their rivals.
In an interview for the German publication Bild , Mattia Binotto , director of Scuderia Ferrari , had to answer these rumors and was quick to deny it outright.
“That’s not true at all,” Binotto said. “According to these rules, everyone was prohibited from working with the new cars in the wind tunnel until January 1, 2021. Yes, it is true that we were able to focus on 2022 before other teams last year, but nothing more. “.
“I will say more, only after five races will we know which team really did the best job with the 2022 car,” added the Swiss.
“Another problem is that we have been internally rebuilding the team for years and this process has not yet come to an end. We wanted to bring the Ferrari culture back to the team, to remind us that we are the only team that has never abandoned Formula 1 and that we are the ones with the most victories over the years”.
In the past and going back to the last big regulatory change in motorsport’s top flight, the one that began in 2014, Mercedes was also rumored to have had the advantage of knowing the rules before its rivals. Obviously, on that occasion, the German team also denied it.
This is usually a very frequent thought every time a modification in the technical rules or power units changes the hierarchical order of the grid, moments in which the party that has been harmed always assures that it has been intentional and inevitably begins to suspect the teams that have benefited the most.
