Ferrari look to have hit the ground running with the new regulations in place with many tipping them for a big year, but Mattia Binotto is cautious as to what Mercedes and Red Bull still have left to truly show. With major changes to the cars for the 2022 season and onwards, teams have been tasked with finding the best way around the new regulations to build the best car.
Every car launch last month appeared to show fine details from every team which were different from one another.
All teams were starting from a sheet of paper, giving the likes of Ferrari and McLaren the chance to close the gap on Mercedes and Red Bull.
Ferrari’s F1-75 attracted the most attention before testing due to the design of the nose and sidepod.
And testing soon indicated that they were certainly on the right path with their base car for the new season.
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Times and performances from the three-day session in Barcelona are taken with a pinch of salt, particularly as teams noted their cars will look significantly different for the first of the season in two weeks.
There were more questions than answers from what Mercedes and Red Bull showed during practice.
And Binotto is wary of writing off the two favourites for the Constructors’ Championship after just one practice session.
“I think it’s too early to judge performance,” he told Sky Italy.
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“Some teams are hiding more speed than others. We have to look at the testing in Bahrain and the first races.
“At the beginning of the season, we will try to unleash the full potential of the car and make the first update. The changes we will make will be small things, not serious things.
“So at the start of the season we will mostly focus on unleashing the full potential of the current car.”
There is the expectation that major changes will be made to the cars before official pre-season testing in Bahrain starts.
But Binotto doesn’t think it will take long before all the cars on the grid adopt a one-size-fits-all design.
“What surprised me was that although the cars were so different from each other, they were very close in terms of performance,” Binotto added.
“After all, when you see different concepts, you expect it to have an impact on track performance.
“But at some point the cars will converge in performance, even if they are very different in concept.”
Keyword: Ferrari boss sceptical of Mercedes and Red Bull secrets ahead of first 2022 F1 race