Ferrari says the vast majority of its resources are now focused on development of its 2022 car amid the impending overhaul to Formula 1’s regulations.
Formula 1 is introducing revised technical rules next season, providing teams with a quandary on how it should be splitting its focus between 2021’s car and the project for 2022.
Ferrari slumped to its worst campaign in 40 years in 2020, amid problems with its draggy car and sub-par power unit, but it has made gains with its 2021 package.
The squad holds fourth in the standings, within reach of McLaren, having scored points with both cars across the opening two events.
But Ferrari’s Racing Director Laurent Mekies says the manufacturer is aware of the bigger picture in its bid to return to front-running contention.
“It’s for us very clear, the vast majority of our resources are on 2022,” said Mekies.
“It’s an efficiency race now. We have to choose, we have made our choice and we are pretty much on full push on 2022.
“It doesn’t mean that you will not see things coming here and there but certainly the vast majority of the effort has switched already.
“On one side it’s painful because the gaps are small this year but on the big picture it’s clear for us where the strategy needs to be pushing and that’s for next year’s car.
“Again, it doesn’t mean that we will not have a good fight with the midfield during the next 20 races but we’ll have to do that on a race-by-race basis without counting on the flow of parts coming.”
Mekies added that Ferrari’s performance across the first two events was important for a range of reasons.
“We demonstrated that we could put our car back on the right direction in terms of development and luckily this is what we have seen in Bahrain and Imola,” he said. “Of course, this is only a first step.
“We know there is a lot of work ahead of us, but it was crucially important for us to be able to demonstrate that the car could improve from where it was.
“Not only does it give us better lap time and better positions on the grid, it gives us confidence that we correlate better with the factory, we can prepare better for the race weekend and we can execute better the race weekend as well.
“It’s a bit of a snowball effect. It’s only the very beginning of a path to recovery but it was certainly an important first data point for us.”
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