The news may come as a surprise, but there are no such thing as technical miracles in F1 and performance improvements are just the result of hard work. The builders decided that the big change for 2022 at the level of power units will be the introduction of E10 fuel , a mixture of 90 fossil fuels and 10 ethanol for cars with ground effect.
The addition of ethanol has forced manufacturers to redesign the combustion chambers of six-cylinder engines. Mattia Binotto , Ferrari team boss, estimates the power loss at around 20bhp . The research centers of all motorists ( Mercedes , Ferrari , Honda and Renault ) are working to reduce a gap that has affected everyone more or less equally.
From the few news that are filtered, from Ferrari they indicate that the 2022 engine, ready to be homologated and frozen until 2025, would have brilliantly exceeded the power values of the 065/6 with which the championship ended, both for the design qualities of the ‘Superfast’ unit conceived by the engineer Wolf Zimmermann , under the technical direction of Enrico Gualtieri , as well as the chemical qualities of the latest fuel developed by Shell.
The Dutch oil giant became an “innovation partner” last February, when the multi-year agreement with Scuderia was renewed. This role was no longer just that of sponsor and supplier of gasoline and lubricants, but Shell assumed a fundamental role in the analysis and study of environmentally friendly fuels for present and future F1.
The first example of this close collaboration is the rapid response of the research center in charge of studying E10 fuel for Ferrari to overcome the handicap of 20 hp estimated by Binotto for the ‘ Superfast ‘ engine.
In short, it is not just about working on the new engine to try to reduce the power difference with Mercedes and Honda, but the challenge extends to all fields that can contribute to performance. And the world of F1 is so capable of overcoming any difficulty or problem with research and innovation.
At last there is confidence in the Sports Management engine test bench: the results obtained are even better than those envisaged in the project. However, the undoubted leap in quality will have to be measured against the work done by the rest of the rivals, so the first answers about the real competitiveness of the car will have to wait until the winter tests in February.
