How Ferrari took a look at the map to avoid getting lost with 2022 F1 car

Indeed, the last grand prix victory came in Austria back in July, and all seven races held since then, starting with France, have been won by Red Bull Racing.

Meanwhile, the Maranello cars have continued to demonstrate the strong qualifying pace that has been evident since the start of the year, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz logging four poles between them over those seven events.

The team has been frustrated to see any hopes of winning either of the 2022 world championship titles slip inexorably away as Max Verstappen and RBR piled up the points.

However, there’s also the bigger picture of building up momentum for next season. And despite the short-term disappointments, the race weekends since the summer break have given the team some confidence as it works on its 2023 project. In effect, it’s been a period of taking stock.

“It’s been crucial to confirm that we’re going in the right direction,” says senior performance engineer Jock Clear. “And as soon as you have these question marks over, ‘okay, have we gone the wrong way in set-up?’, you have to be quite brave.

“You’ve got to understand where you are, you can’t afford to just carry on. It’s a bit like if you’re lost, the last thing you should be doing is just barrelling down the road saying, ‘let’s see what happens later.’ Stop and look at the map. And that’s what we did. We stopped and looked at the map.

“And you might say that cost us some valuable race performance over those five races. But it would be unwise not to do that, because the future is always there.

“You can never ignore the fact that you must keep on top of exactly which direction you’re developing in. And we did that. We stopped, we looked at the map. And now we’ve confirmed that we’re going in the right direction.”

Part of that review was apparent in the regular swapping in practice between the updated floor introduced at Paul Ricard and the earlier version. It was a matter of the team checking that it was on the right path rather than being confused.

“We looked at the overall situation,” says Clear. “And obviously, it’s a relative sport. You look at where you are, and you think it looks like you’ve stepped back a bit from France. And the obvious thing we put on in France was the floor.

“So we put the previous floor back on the car. And actually, we’ve concluded that the new floor was better. So we went back to it.

“So yeah,…