FERRARI CLAN REGROUPS
After Ferrari’s worst championship performance since 1980, nothing less than a return to the top three (as a minimum) will do in 2021. To that end, a heavily revised engine will be employed, something that should also help Ferrari’s customers recover from difficult 2020 seasons of their own.
Ferrari designed the SF1000 around drag targets that didn’t match engine output, once the FIA decided to clip the Scuderia’s wings on the eve of last season. Rivals estimated a 50bhp loss, which made
Ferrari seriously slow in a straight line and left it floundering.
Ferrari’s new power unit will feature developments on the internal combustion engine – revised cylinder heads, piston crowns and new alloys have been mooted – as well as improvements to the MGU-H and the combustion process. The Scuderia has also spent its two chassis freeze tokens to unlock further changes, including a new gearbox as part of a rear suspension redesign
– in a bid to improve the SF1000’S tricky handling as it becomes the SF21 this year.
Much will rest on how well the new package performs from day one, as Ferrari has already elected to focus most of its development resources on 2022’s major rule changes. The technical structure has been tweaked again and team principal Mattia Binotto will also spend more time in Maranello to aid those preparations.
He says data from Ferrari’s dynos suggests the revised 2021 car is “certainly more efficient compared to the one we had last year… but we need to be realistic. The gap to the best last year was very important, and not something that we can recover in a single winter”.
Haas has come to similar conclusions, and with money even tighter in Kannapolis, this season will be a holding pattern. That said, the signing of Ferrari junior Mick Schumacher, plus Maranello stalwart Simone Resta arriving as technical director, suggests deepening links between customer and supplier.
There are also suggestions, after what team boss Fred Vasseur called a “strong meeting over the winter”, that Alfa Romeo will eventually extend its partnership with Ferrari for a further three seasons at the end of 2021, ending speculation of a switch to Renault power.