Ferrari’s strategy for Imola upgrades revealed

Ferrari lead the Constructors' Championship by 39 points from Mercedes, while Charles Leclerc is 34 points clear at the top of the Drivers' Standings.

Ferrari are unlikely to bring any major upgrades to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix after their supreme start to the 2022 Formula 1 season.

Charles Leclerc has claimed two wins in the opening three rounds of the year thus far, beating Max Verstappen in a thrilling battle in Bahrain before dominating in Australia.

The wins came either side of another tremendous fight with the Dutchman in Saudi Arabia, but it is clear in the early going in 2022 that the Scuderia are the more consistent team compared with Red Bull.

This is not least because of their longevity. Red Bull have suffered three reliability failures between Verstappen and team-mate Sergio Perez, with both of them retiring late on in Bahrain, before the reigning champion ground to a halt in Melbourne.

Furthermore, Dr Helmut Marko, a senior advisor at Red Bull, affirmed previously that the Maranello squad have built the most versatile car that performs exquisitely in “all conditions.”

It was previously perceived that Ferrari were struggling with “porpoising” a lot more than Red Bull since the turn of the new technical regulations and the subsequent re-introduction of ground effect aerodynamics.

However, Dr Marko suggested that the cause of the failure to Verstappen’s fuel line in Australia was caused by porpoising, so it is evident that more or less every team are having to find ways to mitigate the problem.

The most obvious way to do that is to introduce a new floor, as well as shedding weight that further forces the car into the ground and causes more bouncing.

There was speculation that the Scuderia might be bringing both such upgrades to Imola this weekend, but their engineers will not have been convinced that any major changes are needed yet, according to a report by the Italian edition of Motorsport.com.

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They believe that, while Mattia Binotto’s team have not entirely ruled out the prospect of upgrades for the next race, the current incarnation of the F1-75 has performed so well that they can afford to hold off and save money on the further restricted budget of $140 million this year.

Another factor is that, even were they to bring upgrades to the race, they only have one practice session to test it out before Friday qualifying due to the sprint event.

Binotto has already therefore confirmed that it would make little sense to bring a relatively unknown quantity into the competitive part of the weekend.

“Imola is not the right weekend to bring upgrades,” he said.

“We have decided to not bring anything significant. We are working on porpoising as it has a small impact on performance in Melbourne.”

Red Bull, meanwhile, are expected to rock up to the grand prix this weekend with a lighter car which is anticipated to deduct over two tenths of a second from their lap time.