Season Results: Scuderia Ferrari – all the news of Formula 1 2022

Second place in the Constructors’ Championship is Ferrari’s best result in the past three years, but the season ended with the team’s management resigning…

Expectations were very high. Ferrari was preparing seriously for the new regulations, hoping to gain an advantage and win the title. So initially it developed, but problems with reliability and ridiculous errors brought all efforts to naught. To the disappointment of the tifosi, victory went to Red Bull Racing, and the Scuderia remained second, with Mattia Binotto as team leader and technical director.

The Scuderia sacrificed the 2021 season to dedicate maximum resources to the new Ferrari F1-75. In addition to the development of a completely new chassis, all components of the power plant have been revised to maximize efficiency. Indeed, in 2022 Ferrari power units were among the best, if not the best in terms of power, but in Formula 1 there is always a compromise with reliability, which turned out not to be up to scratch.

During winter testing, the Ferrari F1-75 shone – many laps, excellent pace on the track – it drove around the track as if it were on rails. Everyone called the team one of the favorites. The buildup bothered, but for many it manifested itself to an even greater degree.

The first-ever Grand Prix ended with a pole and Ferrari’s double victory – the first since 2019 and only the fourth since the start of the turbo hybrid era. It has been a long time since the season started so well for Ferrari, especially as both Red Bull Racing drivers retired due to fuel pump problems.

In the second stage – in Jeddah – Verstappen won, but both Ferrari drivers climbed the podium, and in Australia Leclerc won and Max dropped out again. After three races, the Ferrari leader was no less than 46 points ahead of the Red Bull leader. Max then stated that he would need 45 races to bounce back. But everything turned out to be much easier.

In the next five races, Ferrari earned 95 points, and Red Bull Racing – 244! In the individual classification, Max was already ahead of Charles in Spain and after Baku he took 34 points from Leclerc, who had dropped to third place.

Then, in the middle of the battle, Binotto’s sentence that struck everyone that Ferrari is not, in fact, fighting for the championship title this year, sounded that this is a matter of the future.

And before that, Mattia said that Ferrari could win all the remaining races. It became clear that this season is Binotto’s last at Ferrari.

The real turning point came later. Before Paul Ricard’s stage, Ferrari was faster, although the results did not always show this due to reliability problems. Leclerc consistently won pole positions, but in the Red Bull races they finished higher thanks to better strategy and reliability.

Both teams brought new soils to France. Red Bull wanted to move the center of gravity of aerodynamic pressure to the rear wheels to use a smaller rear wing with the same balance – and increase speed on the straights. And after that, Ferrari only achieved a better result than Red Bull on two of the eleven circuits.

But it wasn’t just about speed. Ferrari made absolutely amazing strategic decisions at times, so many during the season wondered: what would the Scuderia come up with this time to not win the race. A rare Grand Prix managed without any surprises from the Ferrari strategists, and at Red Bull Racing, on the other hand, they acted precisely and efficiently, winning victory after victory.

At first, what happened caused criticism from the Italian press and then from the drivers – Charles Leclerc criticized the team more than once on the radio when an unscheduled pit stop suddenly appeared or the team chose a different tire compound from the rest. It seemed that something stubbornly pulled the team back. And then they added Mercedes – and almost certainly Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship.

In the end, Leclerc took nine pole positions during the season – the same number as in his entire previous career – and won just three races. His team-mate Carlos Sainz won qualifying for the first time in his career this year, taking three poles and taking his first victory by finishing first at Silverstone. The number of race wins was clearly inferior to the number of qualifying wins.

Much more was expected from the team. In the spring it seemed to many that the title was almost in Ferrari’s pocket, that such an experienced team with strong drivers should keep the lead they had gained at the beginning of the season, and then it melted like ice on a hot day in a couple of months.

The need for change was clear. Talk that Binotto is going to leave his post, although he still formally had a contract until the end of 2023, emerged in the summer. And with each subsequent miss on the track, the farewell became more and more inevitable.

In mid-November, Ferrari officially denied the rumors of Binotto’s departure, and two weeks later Mattia himself resigned, leaving the team with which he had spent 28 years. They promised to appoint a replacement next year, but a few more weeks passed – and Frederic Vasseur was appointed team leader.

The last time the team achieved great success when it was led by Frenchman Jean Todt, Briton Ross Brawn and South African Rory Byrne. Then there were some Italians: Stefano Domenicali, Marco Mattiacci, Maurizio Arrivabene and Mattia Binotto. The new team leader, Frederic Vasseur, is French, as is Jean Todt. Can he succeed?

It’s not an easy job to manage a Ferrari team.