He was aided by a few retirements, and a Lewis Hamilton five-second penalty, but Leclerc showed that Ferrari could compete.
The Highs…Īlthough 2020 will go down as Ferrari’s worst season in this century, there were still some good highs in a unique campaign.ĭespite speculation of Ferrari suffering an engine downgrade ahead of 2020 season opener in Austria, Charles Leclerc managed to perform miraculously and secure a podium finish for Ferrari and himself, potentially signifying that the Italian company can still challenge for podiums. The Italian manufacturer finished as low as sixth in the drivers’ standings last season – lowest since 1980 in which they finished in tenth.Īnd matters got worse for Ferrari, with the new regulations delayed until 2022, the Italian company look likely to suffer from a similar type of engine for 2021, leading to another potentially dreadful season. It may have been his most efficient lap of the weekend.2020 F1 season will go down as one of the worst campaigns for Ferrari in recent history. Leclerc biked round circuit on Thursday with his engineers. Now, they have a high-drag car with what Fernando Alonso might call a GP2 engine. So Ferrari have designed a car to be fast through the corners, on the assumption that the power unit will take car of the straights. Speed in F1 is rarely down to just one element and the aerodynamic concept of a car is always going to be based around how fast it is going thanks to the engine, among other things. They are on track for their worst Constructors’ Championship finish since 1981. One alternative to Ferrari’s speed problems? (Photo: AP)Įven if Ferrari are innocent and the smoke and mirrors around that mystery settlement are hiding nothing as sinister as a rule-break, they cannot deny that they are catastrophically slow in 2020. Even now, the team are still blocking the release of details on intellectual property grounds and the paddock are still campaigning for openness on the grounds of sporting integrity. Teams remained infuriated that Ferrari could potentially have broken the rules and had it quite openly covered up. Essentially, a community service sentence. Amazingly, they said they would be keeping the results of it secret and released a vague statement about Ferrari agreeing “to a number of technical commitments that will improve the monitoring of all Formula 1 power units”.
The FIA did eventually admit to concluding an analysis of the engine and “reached a settlement” with Ferrari. However, the rest of the season saw Ferrari continue to “experiment” on set-up, reaffirming those suspicions. The team adamantly denied that this directive was the reason behind a sudden drop in straight-line speed but team boss Mattia Binotto insisted it was down to some experimental settings, “a trade-off between grip limit and power limit has been moved this weekend, as a test on our side, to try to match cornering”. Ferrari’s rivals maintained that the team had designed a system to hold the fuel in the car in a different way, thus hoodwinking the sensor into registering the correct numbers. A technical directive was issued by the FIA outlawing certain settings related to fuel flow, which is strictly regulated. The key moment had come at the US Grand Prix last year. They had gone from a ding-dong battle to a walkover. In 2020, Ferrari found they were outstripped in aerodynamics and engine power. In 2019, their engine dominance continued although Mercedes found gains in other areas such as aerodynamics and were able to extend their run of Constructors’ Championships. F1 Today: Ferrari will be glad to return to Monza in front of empty stands with no one to witness their embarrassment Pre-race is about the closest either Ferrari driver has been able to get to Lewis Hamilton (Photo: Getty)
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