Binotto: Improving reliability is the biggest challenge

Ferrari acknowledged that they were forced to reduce the power level of the power plants in 2022, which was the result of a series of technical problems that manifested themselves in the first half of the championship. Therefore, the priority task for the winter season is to improve reliability.

From the Spanish Grand Prix in May, where Charles Leclerc led but had to retire, to the Austrian Grand Prix in July, where Carlos Sainz’s car caught fire, there were three engine failures in six races.

In Baku, for example, Leclerc battled for the lead, but on lap 20 another engine on his F1-75 blew up, forcing Charles to start from the last row on the next leg in Canada, as the powerplants assigned to him for the entire season had already ended, although it was only the ninth stage of the championship.

The physical size of the turbine on Ferrari engines is smaller than on Mercedes and Honda engines (which are officially called RBPTH001), and according to experts, this provides higher dynamic performance, however, to achieve the desired level of power, this device must operate at higher turning revs.

Italian team principal Mattia Binotto admitted that they had to reduce the speed of the turbine over the Mexican weekend because the race track in Mexico City is high above sea level and the air is less dense there, so the engines operate with increased loading . As a result, the Scuderia’s cars were noticeably inferior to their main rivals, and Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc had to settle for 5th and 6th places.

Even in Abu Dhabi, engine power had to be reduced somewhat as a precaution, so, speaking of the winter off-season duties, Binotto listed improving engine reliability as one of the priorities.

“This is the most important task because to fight for wins you have to achieve reliability, and this season we didn’t have enough of it, which affected the results,” The Race quoted Binotto as saying. – The second task is to increase the speed of the car, because although we were very fast in qualifying, we sometimes lacked speed in the races, partly due to a high level of relegation, and we could not fight for higher positions .

If you manage to build a fast and reliable car, then even if you make mistakes in the choice of tactics or pit stops, you can always compensate for this with speed. Our efforts should be focused on that.”

Earlier, Mattia Binotto admitted that Ferrari ended the F1-75 modernization program quite early, while Mercedes and Red Bull continued to work on technical innovations. Maranello hopes that this will give the team the opportunity to better prepare for next season.