Sorry Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, your car will be all but less competitive over the course of the 2021 season as Scuderia Ferrari says it is 90 to 95 percent focused on developing its 2022 car and the new regulations . There is no risk of jeopardizing next year’s car in trying to beat McLaren to third in the championship this year.
2020 was not a good year for Ferrari as it couldn’t finish sixth in the constructors’ championship. After being forced to curb its illegal engine for 2019, the car was significantly slower. Imagine. For the year 2021, however, the Scuderia has managed to find a way to make their engine more powerful, this time presumably in a legal way. The SF21 isn’t as hopeless as the 2020 SF1000.
After the first four races of the season, Ferrari is just 5 points behind McLaren and Charles Leclerc is currently fifth in the drivers’ world championship. The team has clearly found the speed it takes to hold their own at the top of the midfield. But Alpine or Alpha Tauri wouldn’t need much improvement to catch up with them.
Laurent Mekies, Ferrari F1 Sports Director, said he was committed to focusing fully on next year’s car. “We’re pretty much in full swing, that’s already the case with us. If you want to put in a number when you call 90 percent, 95 percent, whatever you want to call it, but it’s pretty much where we are. “
“That is very clear to us, we are focusing on 2022,” added Mekies. “The fact that the field is tight and you may need a few hundredths or a few tenths to move from sixth to third doesn’t change our strategy. The focus is on the next year. We have already converted most of our resources to it. That doesn’t mean that from now on some details on the car won’t change, as we all do with what we learn on the racetrack. But the focus is on the next year, even if the field is narrow. For us it is a clear decision. “
Interestingly enough, McLaren took the opposite approach.
Team principal Andreas Seidl commented at the Spanish Grand Prix: “If you look since the first test this year, we have simply tried to continuously update the car in order to continuously improve the performance. For example, we also made upgrades to Portimao, we also brought updates to the car here in free practice. And we plan to bring more updates in the coming races as well. “
He later added, “It’s obviously a very close battle, especially with Ferrari, and it’s just important to make sure we keep improving the car over the next few races to keep this battle for P3 alive.”
G / O Media can receive a commission
Mekies seems perfectly fine as Ferrari drops to 6th place in the championship again this year. It is only the third team (after Haas and Williams) to announce that it no longer intended to develop the 2021 chassis. There’s no telling what other teams will do by then, but if I were Alpine I would be working on some mid-season updates right now. Good luck with your 2022 car, Ferrari, it sounds like you need it.
The post Ferrari is almost ready to give up its F1 efforts in 2021 first appeared on monter-une-startup.
