Ferrari is back, Red Bull’s gremlins and a tall order for Mercedes

Sathvik Bharadwaj
6 min readMar 23, 2022

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“I used to pray for times like this, to rhyme like this
So I had to grind like that to shine like this
And the matter of time I spent on some locked-up shit
In the back of the paddy wagon, cuffs locked on wrists
Seen my dreams unfold, nightmares come true
It was time to marry the game and I said, Yeah, I do”

(Meek Mill’s intro in Dreams and Nightmares. These bars hit hard with me and fellow Tifosi. )

Ferrari came out of the 2019 summer break in flying form. Charles Leclerc won in Spa and Monza, and Sebastian Vettel led a 1–2 finish in Singapore. Three wins in three races and the car was rapid on the straights. Then came the handcuffs. Red Bull protested to the FIA, pointing to a technical clarification over the fuel systems. Ferrari had played around with the Fuel Flow Meters and the FIA reached an undisclosed agreement with the team, despite finding no evidence of wrong-doings. 2020 was a massive struggle for Ferrari. The Power Unit barely kept up with their competitors and eventually, the team finished sixth in the constructors' championship, their worst season in 40 years. 2021 saw Carlos Sainz replace Sebastian Vettel and the rebuild was solid. Third in the constructors' championship, with the priority being the new regulations for 2022. Led by the Power Unit head Enrico Gualteri, Ferrari introduced an engine upgrade that doubled the voltage of energy storage and deployment in the Energy Recovery System battery pack for the latter half of the 2021 season. Keep this change in mind as you read the rest of the write-up. In 2022, cars are quicker in the fast corners and slower in the slow corners. Ferrari were one of the best teams in and out of slow corners last season.

On Sunday, The Prancing Horses romped to their first 1–2 finish since Singapore 2019 in resounding style, as Ferrari laid down a marker for the other teams in Bahrain. Leclerc was on song all weekend, sealing pole with a stunning lap. What interested me from the on-boards was how he was able to overlap throttle and brakes at many points of the lap and was aggressive in shifting the gears. The embedded video shows the effectiveness of the Ferrari Power Unit in accelerating out of corners.

Grande Macchina

Leclerc managed the race lead brilliantly, the highlight being his battle with Max Verstappen. Max was frustrated over the radio, saying that he did not maximise his pace on the out-laps but ended up wheel-to-wheel with Leclerc after the first pit-stops as the under-cut proved to be a powerful tool (watch out for more instances this season). On three separate instances on lap 17, 18 and 19, Leclerc braked early and allowed Max to pass him down the start-finish straight and compromise his line and tyres, while Leclerc sought to get the DRS down to Turn-4 by being behind Max as they approached the detection zone and used it brilliantly to re-pass Verstappen in spectacular fashion. Max locked up his fresh set at the end of turn-1 on lap 19, making the job much easier for Leclerc who replied with a switch-back. The Monegasque mastered the safety-car restart got his redemption after heartbreak at the same venue in 2019, completing a grand chelem.

What a tussle!

Carlos Sainz capitalized on both Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez suffering from fuel system issues that led to them losing power and retiring in the latter stages of the Bahrain GP. Sainz finished second and was joined by Lewis Hamilton on the rostrum. The Ferrari Power Unit’s gains in ERS recovery, combined with high straight-line speeds saw their customer teams mirror the rewards. Kevin Magnussen finished fifth in the Haas and was followed by Valtteri Bottas in the Alfa Romeo. Guanyu Zhou got his first point on F1 debut, finishing tenth in the sister Alfa. With the new regulations for 2022, every team had to start from scratch. Ferrari have understood the regulations incredibly well. The advanced aerodynamics, combined with the Power Unit have made them serious contenders. Maranello have recovered 25 HP on Red Bull, more on Mercedes

Red Bull have started a new era without Honda as engine suppliers on a sour note. The regulations call for all the teams using 10% E10 fuel and Ferrari’s partners Shell have stepped up to power that F1–75. This is where I believe Red Bull are suffering, with the E10 fuel in high temperatures. The lack of proper cooling saw Pierre Gasly suffer an MGU-K issue and retire from the race. Verstappen was plagued with steering issues during the race, which could be down to a bent track-rod following his pit stops or a larger hydraulic issue. Yuki Tsunoda sat out of FP3 and his radio message of “I cannot turn the steering and something smells like oil” eerily forecast Red Bull and Alpha Tauri’s issues on Sunday. As to what led to both Red Bulls retiring from the race in the final two laps, fingers were pointed to a fuel pump failure. Every team uses the same standard supply of parts for the fuel pump this season. The high ethanol content of the E10 fuels could have led to over-heating of the entire component and is the likely explanation for three out of four Red Bull powered cars retiring.

Mercedes were honest about being behind Ferrari and Red Bull, but nobody believed them after the team’s history of winning the season opener despite being in an awful position pre-season. Qualifying proved that it indeed was a case of the boy who cried Wolff, as Ferrari and Red Bull showed their hand and locked the first two rows of the grid. Mercedes have been plagued by the porpoising issues, which has compromised their straight-line speed as they resorted to a high downforce package for the weekend in Sakhir. Out of the finishers, the bottom five teams were all Mercedes powered and that is a huge cause for concern. Both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell struggled on their second stint, with degradation being another issue to handle for the Silver Arrows. This season onwards, the temperature for tyre blankets has been reduced, leading to decreased grip in the early parts of a stint.

With teams like Alpine already following the Ferrari model instead of Mercedes’s radical no side-pods model, Mercedes have been greatly hampered by their lack of wind-tunnel and CFD time. If Red Bull solve their reliability issues, Mercedes are staring at a long road to return to the summit. The first step will be to fix the porpoising. Mercedes are the only cars to suffer the bouncing at corner exits as well. Power Units and fuels have been homologated till 2025, and Mercedes have fallen behind Ferrari and Red Bull in the pecking order.

Under the skin and in the simulator, the Mercedes looks like a quick car, but the simulations do not account for the porpoising. They have a higher rake than Ferrari or Red Bull and will have to sacrifice their long-term development plans to find short-term solutions. There is a fine balance between compromising performance in a solution to combat porpoising.

Alpine have shown decent pace, but not enough to match Mercedes at the moment. This season is going to be a development battle as well, with all teams trying to maximise their packages for different tracks. Mercedes are the masters of developing their car over a season. But this time around, it seems like Ferrari and Red Bull have packed enough horsepower in their Power Units and understood the regulations better to usurp Mercedes. But never count Mercedes and a hurting Hamilton out of anything. Here is how I predict things to unfold.

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Sathvik Bharadwaj
Sathvik Bharadwaj

Written by Sathvik Bharadwaj

Reporter and Editor at Deccan Herald

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