Carlos Sainz of Spain drives the (55) Scuderia Ferrari SF21 during the F1 Grand Prix of Turkey at Intercity Istanbul Park on October 10, 2021 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Photo by Clive Mason – Formula One/Formula 1
Ferrari were forced to quickly change direction this week for fear of starting the 2022 season by breaking the rules.
The Italian team had announced that they would start the test season early with a private session on their own racetrack in Fiorano – with the 2021 car.
Ferrari has reportedly understood that the FIA would give the green light to using a year-old test car because the cars are so wildly different for the all-new 2022 rules.
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However, when test driver Robert Shwartzman didn’t pull out of the Fiorano garage on time, it was because the team was suddenly unclear that running the 2021 car was legal.
Ferrari will now instead use a 2018 car for its few days of racing to also feature Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
“Until we get an update from the FIA on the details of the test cars, we will be using an SF71H from 2018,” said a spokesman for the Maranello-based team.
F1 teams – with Alpha Tauri in action at Imola this week with a 2020 car – are understandably eager to hit the track to prepare for the radically different rules of 2022.
“I could well imagine that one or the other team goes completely in the wrong direction and suffers a painful year,” suspects Mercedes technical director James Allison.
Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s chief technical officer, agrees that the 2022 rules are likely to result in “people finding good solutions and others not.”
“But the real value of these rules is that the competition gets tighter and better over time,” he told Spanish newspaper AS.
“It’s hard to expect 2022 to be any more spectacular than 2021 because that’s a very high bar. But once there is some convergence, more cars will be in front and that will be positive,” he added.
“I think the gap between the best and the worst car was about three seconds in 2021,” Tombazis continued. “I hope that within a year it will be less than half.”
