Ferrari: No indication new regulations favour Red Bull

Binotto at pre-season testing — Photo: © LAT Images

Ferrari

Ferrari: No indication new regulations favour Red Bull

Red Bull's pace in pre-season testing sparked concerns new aerodynamic rules has given the team an advantage

Ewan Gale

Thursday 18 March 2021 09:04

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has seen nothing in pre-season testing to suggest the new aerodynamic regulations for the upcoming season favours different car-rake configurations.

Red Bull and AlphaTauri both performed strongly in winter testing and both share a high-rake design philosophy whilst Mercedes and Aston Martin, two teams with the lowest rake, struggled.

Despite this, Binotto does not believe the changes to the aerodynamic regulations for this year have unduly favoured any team.

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"It has been a big change for all the teams," Binotto said. "If you look at the overall amount of aero performance we have lost it is significant, and it has been difficult to recover all of it.

"It has been a big change but I don't think it favours one or the other solutions. Each car has its own concept, and you always try to optimise yourself around it.

"So I think it's pretty neutral on the various concepts but obviously you should try to have a comparison yourself and that is something we've not done."

Ferrari seemed to make a step forward ahead of the new season, with the new power unit and aerodynamic revisions providing the Scuderia with hope for an improved showing off the back of its worst F1 campaign since 1980.

"We knew that with only three days it was going to be very busy and very intense, and it was very busy and very intense," Binotto added.

"The main priority was to understand car behaviour and in all the conditions. That is where we focused our energy.

"We collected a lot of data which now needs to be analysed to understand the correlations with the wind tunnel etcetera. In terms of data measurements, all went very smooth, we made mileage and followed our plane."