Many have had doubts relating to the form shown by Ferrari in the last period of the year, with the Red of Maranello also reached by an aggressive Mercedes. The key to this "poor" form is the lack of updates, since the last package was introduced at Monza. With a minor update for the Grand Prix of Japan.
Motivation is related to Budget cap, which was lowered to $140 million this year from $145 million a year earlier. In an interview with RaceFans, the team principal Mattia binotto revealed that the Maranello team had to choose between developing parts to be sent for 2023 or creating them for 2022, with a decidedly higher cost.
Binotto's words
“It was not a choice, but an obligation. We simply ran out of funds within the budget cap, and consequently we could not develop the F1-75 further, remaining where we were. We didn't compromise development for next year's car, obviously, but we had to stop this year's because, in addition to the normal development cost, for the current car we would also have had to create the parts and bring them to the track, and not we actually had the budget to do it.”
Also for the Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi, no updates are expected, but the battle seems to have moved on to 2023 a long time ago. Also thanks to the extremely similar technical regulations for next year – which is different from the transition from 2021 to 2022.
