The predicted head start that has helped Ferrari in F1 2022

Lewis Hamilton famously declared over team radio last year in Baku that he was taking the approach of it being a marathon and not a sprint.

That may have been in direct reference to a chaotic race on the streets of Azerbaijan, but it holds true for the Formula 1 season as a whole. It doesn’t matter how well you start; the only thing that really counts is who leads at the end. That’s why Ferrari, and its rivals, are maintaining a watching brief over what has been a clear strong start for the F1-75, as the Maranello team has got out of the blocks first.

To few people’s surprise (for reasons explained below), Ferrari has not only produced perhaps the most radical of cars this season, but it has unleashed what appears to be the benchmark challenger at this precise moment in time.

For although testing times at Barcelona were not especially accurate, and digging out a proper picture meant trying to guestimate potential fuel loads and engine maps, on top of tyre compounds and DRS usage, all the indications pointed towards the Maranello cars being the standout performer.

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No matter the conditions, nor the time of day, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr were consistently there, bashing out competitive laps – which said much about the solid platform they had been given.

But such a state of affairs had been widely expected by those in the know at rival teams, who have been well aware of the perfect storm that has given Ferrari the early edge in 2022.

Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari F1-75

Photo by: Alessio Morgese

For its competitive struggles in recent years – both the dire 2020 form and it not being a match for Mercedes/Red Bull last year – served to give it a head start for this season. In most basic terms, not being in the world championship fight last year meant it was not dragged in to the kind of season-long development race that Mercedes and Red Bull needed to stay in for their title hopes. Ferrari was pretty comfortable in switching over its development focus as early as it possibly could, meaning that it was almost certainly working 100% on the 2022 car well before its main rivals.

It said much about where its mindset was, also, when it elected to hold fire on introducing its 2021 engine upgrades until very late in the season: so it could maximise development time and then use their arrival as a testbed for the progress it appears to have made with its 2022 power unit.

But worth even more than the earlier start was the fact that Ferrari was also given a pretty significant advantage over Mercedes and Red Bull when it came to how much time and resource it could devote to car development.

Ferrari’s woeful 2020 campaign actually proved to be a long-term blessing in disguise

The delay in F1’s new era rules thanks to COVID meant that a switch over to a new Aerodynamic Testing Regulations (ATR) formula came into force in time for it to help the first year of the ground effect machinery.

As a handicap system to offer the least successful teams a bit more time with development to help them catch up, Ferrari’s woeful 2020 campaign actually proved to be a long-term blessing in disguise. Having finished sixth in the championship in 2020, for the first half of last year (up until 30 June) it had a notable advantage when it came to the amount of windtunnel testing it could do.

While reigning champion Mercedes was allowed 864 official windtunnel runs and 216 hours of ‘wind on’ time, Ferrari had 984 runs and a total of 246 hours. In percentage terms, compared to what teams were previously allowed to do, Mercedes had to cut back to 90%, whereas Ferrari could ramp up its efforts to 102.5%. Working against each other, if Mercedes was going to come up with as good a car, it would need to be working more than 10% smarter.

George Russell, Mercedes W13

Photo by: Erik Junius

And in the world of F1, full of the brightest engineering brains in the world, the differences between the top teams and the bottom teams are much, much smaller than that.

Reflecting on the scenario, and knowing the time and resource advantage Ferrari had, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff reckoned that the gap between them as the F1 cars hit the ground would automatically be a few tenths in the real world.

“The regulations were designed for a specific purpose of making the field more competitive, and not having these huge gaps,” said Wolff about the ATR. “It is a fine adjustment between P1, P2 and P3 so not a huge disadvantage. But if one of the teams is an outlier, like Ferrari in the first part of 2021, it can be up to a couple of tenths if you extrapolate from your own development curve. But this is what was meant with the whole thing.

“I think, the teams that are more further back, in P7, P8, P9 and P10 will have quite more, up to 20% development time and it should make it more competitive. If you are in the lead you are at a certain disadvantage but we went eyes wide open to this.”

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Lewis Hamilton’s remark that the difference between Mercedes and Ferrari could be a ‘few months’ was probably not far enough, but it is fair to say that would only be true for the start of testing.

For F1 is never a static competition, and it is often remarked that if you stand still you are going backwards. So what may have been true of the gap between Ferrari and the rest in Barcelona test, may not be the case for the Bahrain test, or even the first race. The development race is going to be intense and whatever advantage Ferrari had last week (the team reckoned just one tenth gain from its extra windtunnel work), it could all be wiped out by an aggressive update push from Mercedes and Red Bull.

Mattia Binotto, Team Principal, Ferrari

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

That was why even Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto was keeping his feet on the ground in Barcelona despite all the indications pointing to the Scuderia looking to be in the best shape possible.

Asked about Hamilton’s comments that Ferrari were several months in front of everyone, Binotto replied: “I'm pretty sure that they will be two or three months ahead of us by the time we will be in Bahrain.

Ferrari has certainly sprinted well out the blocks, but now the real race begins

“I think that it's very difficult today to judge the performance and the relative competitiveness between the teams, but what's important for us was to collect data. I think we can be somehow satisfied for the amount of laps we did, collecting data and again, and will be analysed back to Maranello.

“I heard that there will be rumours that our competitors will bring big updates and upgrades. So I'm more concerned myself, than I think Hamilton is on ourselves.”

Ferrari has certainly sprinted well out the blocks, but now the real race begins – with a chequered flag not up for grabs for a few weeks yet.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images