“From what I understand, he’s probably not at ease as much as I am with the balance we have in the car,” Leclerc said of Vettel. “The rear is moving quite a bit and I just feel quite good in the car at the moment.”
Vettel does indeed like to have the rear of the car planted in corners, which is one of the reasons he won four world championships in the Red Bull fitted with the now-banned exhaust-blown rear diffuser.
“I have to think that we have the same car,” Vettel said in October. “I trust the people around me and in the garage. I have one picture that is told to me by the stopwatch at the end of the lap, the other thing is by my feeling. Feeling-wise I really struggle to put the good laps together, be consistent and feel the grip that maybe Charles is able to feel.”
The upgrades were working and Leclerc went on a point-scoring spree, but there was still a lack of horsepower.
“We don’t currently have the best engine,” Binotto said in October. “Next year (2021) we may have a completely new power unit. As Ferrari, we have invested a lot in the development of the power unit for 2021, furthermore for 2022.
“The engine is currently running on the dyno. I think that the feedback in terms of performance and reliability is very promising. Even if we have got some limitations on dyno operations, there’s still room for improvement. From what I can see today at the dyno, we are somewhat happy with the results.”
The regulations limit how much time an engine manufacturer can operate its dyno.
“Can we reach Mercedes?” Binotto said. “Perhaps that is asking too much since it means gaining between 40 and 50 horsepower, but being on par with Honda and Renault would in itself be a remarkable step forward.”
Ferrari’s goal in the final races of last season was to decipher which performance gains came from the upgrades and which were circuit specific. That could then be translated into the design of the 2021 car, which would be an updated version of the 2020 model.
“The most important thing is to get confirmation that our development is on the right track,” Enrico Cardile, Ferrari’s head of performance development, said. “Indications from the past few grands prix are positive.
“We have to consider that, more than ever this year, development is aimed at the following season. All the same, we still expect to see a performance improvement with the SF1000: It would be very useful to at least find ourselves heading the group of cars and drivers currently fighting within just a few tenths for places four and lower.
“Only a couple of times this year have we been able to fight for a place in the sun on the second or third row and our aim between now and December is to be consistently fighting for those places,” he added. “But then, precisely because this part of the grid is so close, it takes hardly anything to find yourself fourth or 12th, but that’s all part of the game.”
The FIA ruled the teams could not design all-new cars for 2021. The teams were each given two “tokens” and they could decide where to spend those tokens on making specific upgrades to their cars. Ferrari focused on the back of its car.
“Our belief is that the rear end offers the biggest margin for improvement,” Cardile noted. “I say that not just because it’s the area of the car where pretty significant changes have been introduced in the technical regulations, but also we believe that because of the way our car is laid out, we could really make significant progress.
“That’s why we’ve decided to spend our two tokens allowed in the rules in this very area. Because next year (2021) it will not be permitted to modify all the basic components of the car, but only some. The FIA sets a token allocation for each of them, with all teams having two tokens available.”
Ferrari will definitely start the new season with a more competitive car than it had last year, but the other teams have been working hard as well. It will definitely be interesting to see where Ferrari is in the pecking order at the start and finish of this season. n