Red Bull demonstrated in Imola with its double the great step forward that the RB18 has taken in terms of performance, while Ferrari has realized that it must risk in the development war, although the Italians paid the price for the aerodynamic choice, lightly loaded, so they weren’t rivals on the straights.
The Maranello team focused on understanding the car at the start of the 2022 season in order to challenge the Milton Keynes team, with the Austrians continuously bringing updates to Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez’s cars to be more efficient.
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The advantage that the F1-75 enjoyed in the first races has vanished, and Ferrari is aware that the time has come to react. The team’s boss, Mattia Binotto , immediately after the loss to Red Bull at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, spoke only of adapting the red car to the Miami circuit, with a lower rear wing.
The long straights of the American track will force the teams to opt for a more efficient aerodynamic configuration, in search of maximum top speed in the couple of kilometers of flat stages in Miami.
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“Since Miami is a high-speed circuit compared to what we have seen so far, we will carry a rear wing designed for tracks that require efficiency,” Binotto said.
“We know that Red Bull will also have a low/medium load configuration aerodynamic package, and therefore they will be competitive,” said the Swiss. “We will fight on a new track where it will be very nice to compete.”
Ferrari F1-75 rear wing detail
But the biggest news for the Maranello crew in recent days is that the 066/7 power unit has reached its reliability targets, completing its seventh run on the test bench without experiencing any serious issues.
This means that Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz will have all the power that the engine designed by Wolf Zimmermann in the United States is capable of producing. If we add to all this that the new hybrid package (MGU-K, battery and control unit) is also scheduled to debut, it is easy to see that the team led by Enrico Gualtieri aims to consolidate the supremacy of its engine.
We can confirm that Carlos Sainz’s first engine, which was replaced at Imola as a precautionary measure when it was already assembled, will be used again in Miami in free practice, thus becoming a test unit.
In Maranello, after the setback suffered on the home circuit, they intend to turn the situation around to face the next tour of Miami and Europe in a positive way, and erase what happened in Imola.
