Is Ferrari locked into a losing streak?

As Formula 1 draws up plans to go racing again after an enforced hiatus, one of its key competitors is girding itself to deal with a pain it has long been expecting. Ferrari disappointed in testing and Formula 1's adaptation to new global circumstances means the Scuderia must carry low expectations to the first race when the season begins.

When it launched the SF1000 back in February, Ferrari made the bold suggestion that it had adopted 'extreme concepts' to move the game on from 2019's SF90. That car was a three-time grand prix winner but, in the final analysis, fell way short of its expected potential and carried weaknesses 'baked in' to the design concept.

One of the areas in which the SF90 was found wanting over the course of 2019 was in peak downforce levels. It was fast in a straight line but not enough to claw back time lost by indifferent cornering performance over a single lap - and the lack of downforce triggered a vicious cycle of other deficits, such as greater tyre degradation, which mounted up over a race distance.

Ferrari ran a very different front-end aerodynamic concept compared with Mercedes, based around what's known as an 'inboard-loaded' front wing design. In this, the separate horizontal elements of the wing are more steeply raked at their inner ends; the flatter profiles on the outboard sides means a greater proportion of the airflow energy is used to channel the flow around the front wheels rather than to create downforce.

The 'outboard-loaded' concept used by Mercedes, and adopted by others, theoretically offers greater downforce but creates challenges in managing the turbulent wake of the front wheels. This may be among the reasons Ferrari chose to persist with the inboard-loaded philosophy for this season, having successfully added downforce to last year's car through in-season development - although it wasn't until Singapore last year that the package began to deliver its full potential.

"I think we improved last year's car, there were weaknesses we figured out fairly quickly," says Singapore winner Sebastian Vettel. "It was quite clear what we were fighting, what we wanted to improve.

"I think we improved it for this year. So naturally, I think it will be a step forward. But we've also seen in testing that, you know, we're not smashing lap times with ease. So we are not the favourites.

"We had a solid testing in Spain. But, unfortunately, we were not as quick as we hoped to be. But I think we were quite realistic with the expectations we had for Melbourne. The first race normally you never really know where you are, so you're also a bit nervous and excited. Obviously, we have to delay that feeling for the real first grand prix that we get to..."

The shortcomings of the SF1000, and the likelihood the regulations freeze may make them challenging or even impossible to resolve, accounts for why Ferrari hesitated before lending its blessing to delaying the new regulations until 2022

Between testing and the ultimately aborted Australian GP, team principal Mattia Binotto sought to manage expectations internally, telling staff in an email that Ferrari was unlikely to show race-winning pace around the streets of Albert Park. The Ferrari factory, in common with other F1 facilities across Europe, has been closed since shortly after that season-opening race was postponed, apart from limited activity producing protective masks and ventilator components.

In any ordinary year there would be time and opportunity over the course of the season to drill down into a car's weaknesses and - depending on the team's skill and resources - to mitigate or cure those flaws through development. But this was no ordinary year even before the COVID-19 pandemic ripped up the calendar.

By mid-season Ferrari would have needed to allocate most of its resources to a clean-sheet design for the new rules set originally planned for 2021. The pandemic prompted an agreement between the teams, the FIA and F1 to delay the introduction of those rules until 2022, but this wasn't a get-out-of-jail-free card for Ferrari because it was packaged along with a design freeze on certain areas of the current cars.

The shortcomings of the SF1000, and the likelihood this freeze may make them challenging or even impossible to resolve, accounts for why Ferrari hesitated before lending its blessing to the agreement.

"I think it was the right and good decision," said Binotto at the time. "Obviously it has to be a responsible decision. I think the situation with the emergency we are facing becomes the priority, not only the interests of a single team, but really looking at the wider picture.

"Obviously we know some teams were in [financial] difficulty, time would become very tight to develop new cars for 2021, so I think at the end that was the right choice.

"Is that somehow not in favour of Ferrari? Very likely, yes, maybe, but I think that we are challengers, and we are people that want to do each time better than we did in the past, and there will be a time where eventually... we can recover and we will be stronger."

In a subsequent interview with Sky Italia, Binotto repeated his admission that the design freeze has added to Ferrari's challenges, saying, "Considering the current baseline and the feedback from the tests, we don't think we have an advantage with this choice.

"The regulations will remain the same, but there will still be room for aerodynamic development, though we have yet to define that in detail. We are discussing it with all the representatives of the teams and with the FIA, to understand what will be frozen and what will be open to development."

The situation regarding Ferrari's powertrain is also layered with uncertainty. Doubts were raised about the legality of its power unit late last season after a new specification introduced for customers at Spa, then used by the works team at Monza, yielded a remarkable performance gain.

Two theories abounded: that Ferrari could be using a 'controlled leak' of oil from the intercooler to aid the combustion process, or that it was somehow exceeding the maximum 100kg/hr fuel-flow rate without detection.

But in circumstances such as these the FIA rightly places the onus on the other teams to lodge a formal protest, or to seek 'clarification' from the technical department over whether a theoretical system is legal or not. It does not act on innuendo - especially if, as was the case here, its standard scrutineering checks reveal no evidence of wrongdoing.

So it was not until early November, after Red Bull filed a detailed enquiry relating to 'filtering' of the signal from a car's fuel-flow sensor, that the FIA issued a strongly worded technical directive saying such a system would be illegal. This coincided with Ferrari's straightline speed and qualifying performance abruptly falling off from the US Grand Prix onwards.

While correlation doesn't equal causation, and Ferrari insisted it was simply running its cars with more downforce, the FIA impounded an engine for more detailed investigation after the season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Remarkably, though, this inquest ended in what appears to be a stalemate, as the FIA released a statement saying it had reached a "confidential settlement" with Ferrari. The predictably furious response from other teams moved FIA president Jean Todt to state that his hands had been tied by a lack of adequate proof: faced with the possibility that any Ferrari appeal would take months to resolve, the "confidential settlement" was his least-worst option.

Given the additional scrutiny its powertrain will be under, Ferrari must pin its hopes on aerodynamic development being left sufficiently open for it to design its way out of trouble

"They have been sanctioned but we cannot give the detail of the sanction," Todt told Autosport. "Unfortunately it is very much a fait accompli of technical matters, because our technicans say, 'We cannot for sure demonstrate as much as we should that they were not legal.'"

Nevertheless, from this season onwards all cars must carry a second fuel-flow sensor which transmits an encrypted signal. Given the additional scrutiny its powertrain will be under, Ferrari must pin its hopes on aerodynamic development being left sufficiently open for it to design its way out of trouble. Given that it took until the update package introduced in Singapore last year to transform the SF1000's predecessor, solutions may be a long time coming.

"No matter when we start, our expectations will be fairly realistic, knowing that maybe we're not the clear favorites," says Vettel. "But obviously we hope for a relatively long season after that, lots of races to prove that we know we can come back from where we might start. Obviously it will depend on how many races we will actually have, how long the season will be.

"But maybe this period can help us - even though development and everything is stopped, your head is still switched on, so any ideas that we have, the engineers have and so on are obviously allowed. And as soon as we get back, hopefully we can put them into the car, and then sooner rather than later, we can make progress.

"But at this stage, I think we have to wait."