Ferrari revealed the weakness of their 2021 car, saying that it was a problem if they went behind in a race.
Ferrari managed to bury the demons of their disastrous sixth-place finish in 2020 and roar back in 2021. They trailed McLaren for much of the season, but staged an impressive comeback to snatch P3 from their rivals in the second half of the season.
On the drivers’ side of things, Carlos Sainz beat McLaren’s Lando Norris to P5. Charles Leclerc ended up finishing seventh, but he was ahead of McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo in the standings. The best of the rest was indeed the Prancing Horse.
It was a great season for the team all things considered. However, Ferrari revealed the weakness of their 2021 car, saying that it was only competitive as long as it stayed ahead.
As quoted by Planet F1, Racing director Laurent Mekies said, “In absolute terms, there is nothing about the new hybrid system where you could say it was a ‘game changer’.
“But when you reflect on it again, you think ‘what if we hadn’t had those tenths and hundredths of a second?’ It would have moved us back X positions.”
Move away
“Because the field is so tight, we think it (their updated power unit) has been very significant in the second and especially the third part of the season,” he continued.
“In some situations, we were vulnerable to overtaking, which killed the overall performance of the car. Once we were behind, that was it.
“So that little extra helped us to use the car’s potential better because we were less vulnerable and could drive freely more often.”
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