Ferrari seemed like a strong contender at the start of the 2022 Formula 1 season. However, as the season has gone ahead, it became more and more clear that the Maranello Outfit aren’t really ready to take the fight to Red Bull.
Ferrari last won a race around 114 days ago and considering their performance at the Mexico City Grand Prix, the witness streak will definitely go on for some more time.
The reason behind the worst performance of Ferrari in 2022 – Mexico City can be found if one analyzes one of the best Ferrari performances of the season – The Austrian Grand Prix.
In the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc managed to take victory. He passed Max Verstappen thrice to finally take the chequered flag ahead of the two-time World champion. However, it was a tragic story of Carlos Sainz. His car caught fire and he couldn’t make it a Ferrari 1-2.
Amongst the F1 tracks on the calendar, Austria’s Red Bull Ring is situated at a very high altitude. However, Mexico’s Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is more than three times as high.
This is why Ferrari decided that it would be better if they compromise on their performance to make sure that the cars don’t have reliability issues like the one in Austria. Ferrari essentially turned down their Power Unit performance.
The small Turbo used by Ferrari was the root of all the problems
At the center of this decision was the Turbo that is used by Ferrari in its Power Unit. Ferrari’s turbo is much smaller than the other turbos used in other power units.
Large turbos and small turbos can both generate equal amounts of power. The only difference is that the smaller turbos need to run much faster. The situation becomes complicated when it needs to run in thin air at high altitudes like in Mexico and Austria.
Ferrari engineers inferred that the rate at which the turbos would need to run in Mexico would put the power unit at risk. Therefore the team decided to turn down the output of the turbo.
This meant that the compromise on the turbo had nullified the advantage that it brought by being small. Being a small unit, it takes up less electrical energy and thus gives the car more acceleration out of a corner.
But that wasn’t to be in Mexico, and therefore Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc could only manage to finish P5 and P6. They finished almost a minute behind Max Verstappen, who won the race.
