Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto was taken aback by Charles Leclerc’s double wins in the first three races, which have helped the Scuderia take both championships. However, for the Sprint event at Imola on April 22-24, the F1-75 will not get major changes.
Although the Australian Grand Prix weekend for the Scuderia Ferraris wasn’t completely trouble-free, Carlos Sainz spun out early on at Albert Park. However, Red Bull rivals Max Verstappen had a late-race reliability failure, as did Leclerc’s Australian Grand Prix triumph in Round 4.
“Yes, I’m quite surprised,” Binotto agreed. “I believe we worked hard and placed a lot of importance on 2022. I knew the team was a fantastic group, and I thought we had improved over the years when compared to previous seasons.”
“Then, as we arrived at winter testing, we knew we had a competitive vehicle; I was not expecting such a fantastic car to begin the season; it would be unethical to believe so. However, I still think that the gap between us and our rivals may be little in the coming races, as evidenced by recent weeks. We should have excellent battles in future races,”
Ferrari currently leads the championship, but their rivals are gearing up for a competitive development war to improve their vehicles and close the gap to the Italian team. Binotto quickly dismissed the talk that the F1-75 would be upgraded for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola, Italy’s first of three weekends in 2022 using the F1 Sprint format 2022.
“It will be a challenging weekend in terms of upgrading and executing them in the Friday session since you must focus your setup on the qualifying session in the afternoon,” he added.
“It will not be necessary to make many improvements in Imola since it will not be the appropriate location for us. We’ve tried to manage what we have still far, which is porpoising and bouncing, which has hurt our performance over the weekend, so we’ll focus on that area. “
“However, during the season, the more major ones will be implemented at a later date.”
