Ferrari eye race wins in 2022 but expect Mercedes, Red Bull to be strong again
Friday, 18 February 2022
The team's ambition is to be competitive again.
Ferrari chief Mattia Binotto said being "competitive" was the team's ambition for 2022 as he unveiled the new F1-75 car – warning Mercedes and Red Bull would be tough to catch.
A sleek look meant Ferrari could be happy about their design work, but Binotto was adamant the proof would come on the track when the car's true pace against the rest of the field can be gauged. It was 2019 when the team last won races.
"I would like the F1-75 to be the car that allows our fans to once again be proud of Ferrari," he said. "Our goal is to reignite the Prancing Horse legend and we can only do that by winning again."
Those words came in a bullish statement, and the team principal was perhaps more guarded about the prospects for topping the podium and championship success when he spoke at the launch.
"That is not our target, it is our ambition because we are Ferrari," Binotto said. "I think we need to be somehow realistic, and if I look at last year the gap to the best was certainly very big at the end of the season.
"It means that those teams are very strong and if they have been strong in the past, they will continue to be very strong. So, they are still for us a benchmark.
"Our objective is to be back competitive, and for me being competitive means somehow being capable of winning races, and somehow try to go to each single race and to fight for the best position."
He said Ferrari's staff had been "brave", "united" and "open-minded" in coming up with the new car and backed drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz as having "the right talent, the right capacity, the right mentality and the right approach" for the job that lies ahead.
"They are part of the team; they know to be on the podium, the best position on the podium, we need our car to be sufficiently fast to achieve it," Binotto said, in a video interview published on the official F1® website.
"Our objective together is to try to develop the car as much as we can, certainly at the start of the season to exploit it to the maximum of its potential, and let's see if our car will be fast enough to be capable to battle for the best position."
A host of technical changes in the sport this year have cast uncertainty on how the season might play out, but Binotto expects Ferrari, a distant third in the constructors' championship last year, will face a major challenge to reel in Mercedes and Red Bull. The team are not shying away from that, though.
Leclerc said: "We've got great people here in Ferrari, hopefully, great drivers too, and hopefully when we put everything together on track, we'll be able to fight for wins."
Sainz is in the process of discussing a new contract, to keep him with the team beyond the end of 2022, and the Spanish driver said of those talks: "they're progressing. I'm very happy in Ferrari. We are both happy with each other. It's just now a matter of getting to agree on what's going to happen in the future. I hope we have something to tell you in the near future."
“I don’t know about you but we’re feeling #F1 2022”#essereFerrari pic.twitter.com/StmTyDeMIH
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) February 17, 2022
