Lost among the big headlines and headlines of 2021 was Ferrari F1’s impressive recovery in 2021. After a miserable season in 2020, Ferrari finished third in the Drivers’ Championship this season after a hard-fought battle with McLaren that spanned the season.
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Despite this, her tunnel vision for the development of her car for 2022 has not changed.
This was recently confirmed by Sporting Director Laurent Mekies in a recent media interaction. Mekies described how they never considered giving the SF21 more than normal attention despite the McLaren challenge.
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“We decided not to compromise for 2022,” he said.
Mekies said the decision to focus on 2022 was made fairly early on: “We were hoping at the time because we’re quite a distance away from McLaren, which is early in the season, we were hoping that at some point we could fight for third place.”
“The only development we had in the second half of the year was the hybrid, which we will also use next year.”
The PU upgrade was not a game changer for Ferrari
Many consider the post-Monza engine upgrade to be the turning point in Ferrari vs. McLaren. Since then, the Italian team has never looked back in their fight as McLaren tried to catch up but never managed to.
Yet Laurent Mekies said: “Nothing you could say was a game changer”. He admits that in hindsight they are a tiny few hundredths ahead of their competitors.
He explained: “I think because the field is like that [tight] We felt that the effect was more evident in the second part of the season or the third part of the season.”
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“This little bit of help ultimately helped us to make better use of some of the car’s potential.”
Formula One F1 – Turkish Grand Prix – Intercity Istanbul Park, Istanbul, Turkey – October 9, 2021 Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr during qualifying REUTERS/Umit Bektas
As things unfold for the 2022 season and as we’ve all heard throughout the 2021 season, Ferrari appearing at the top of the table now seems more of a reality and less of a plan.
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And when you factor in the two drivers they have, chances are very high that the Prancing Horse will become a championship contender again.
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https://formulaone.news/mclaren/heres-how-many-cars-ralph-lauren-really-has-in-his-collection
