Ferrari announced last July that it had completed work on its new state-of-the-art simulator in Fiorano , after two years of work, a product developed by the British company Dynisma.
The team revealed their aim was to have it up and running for the final races of the 2021 season, and to help develop its 2022 car under the new technical regulations.
Although the simulator was first used in September, Ferrari has spent the last few months working with its drivers to fine-tune it. The premiere of this item as support for a race was at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend .
Speaking to some media outlets in Abu Dhabi, Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies explained that the idea was to have it fully operational early next year.
“We started using it with the pilots in September, but it takes a month, two months, three months to get it ready,” Mekies said.
“I think Mattia [Binotto] said that we used it as a support in the Jeddah race for the first time. This does not mean that the correlation is over. It is part of the cycle to reach the specific data point that is needed.”
“But is it fully operational? No. When will that be? Probably early next year.”
“So that’s what we’re using, that’s what we’re working on. Is it at peak performance yet? No, not at all.”
The new simulator has everything that the driver can find inside the car as if he were on the circuit itself, like the one used by other teams. Antonio Fuoco and Davide Rigon are the two main Ferrari drivers in the Formula 1 simulator.
Those at Maranello continue to use their previous simulator to help transition to the new facility, which Mekies said will be a “big step” forward and had only been seen by an “extremely limited” number of people inside Ferrari.
“From a resource standpoint, you don’t want to stay in that transition phase too long,” Mekies said.
“It is also the reason why we switched to the new simulator as race support, even though we are not 100% yet, because it takes a lot of effort to go from one to the other.
“But yeah, for the transition, there has to be a time where the two are used together.”
Charles Leclerc said in Abu Dhabi that Ferrari’s new simulator “looks very good” but that he had not yet worked with it.
“I think it should be an improvement in absolutely everything that we noticed, especially for the driver’s feel,” explained Leclerc.
“It is very difficult to recreate the G-forces that we suffer in the real car. So, it will be mainly in that where we will feel that there is a step forward. But I have not tried it yet.
