Ferrari has launched the car it hopes can return to the front of the Formula One grid as a championship contender in 2022.
Ferrari’s new car, the F1-75, retains the team’s iconic red colours but has gone back to a more 1990s look with black front and rear wings.
On the design side, the team appears to have adopted similar sidepod louvres to the ones that caused a stir at Aston Martin’s launch and prompted comparisons on social media to cheese graters and shark gills.
During the launch, Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto said the team had gone for an “innovative” approach with this year’s rule changes.
Ferrari boasts one of F1’s strongest driver lineups in Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, who stay as teammates for the second season. Leclerc joined in 2019, the season he claimed his three F1 wins, while Sainz replaced Sebastian Vettel last season.
A Ferrari driver has not won the drivers’ championship since 2007 and the team has not won the constructors’ title since 2008. However, this season’s aerodynamic rule change has raised excitement about the famous Italian team returning to the front of the grid.
F1 hopes its new rule change will effectively reset the competitive order and create closer racing, although it is likely Mercedes and Red Bull will remain the teams to beat early on. The big question will be whether the likes of Ferrari and McLaren can close the gap from the midfield and move closer over the course of the season.
After failed championship challenges in 2018 and 2019, Ferrari struggled in 2020 and 2021. One potentially positive outcome of that was that the team was able to turn its attention fully to 2022 much earlier than the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull, who were locked in a championship fight until the final lap of last season’s championship.
Source: www.espn.com