Binotto: Team made significant innovations for 2022 car

The 2020 season was one to forget for Ferrari, as the team endured a winless season on their way to a miserable sixth in the Constructors' table with a slow car marred by an under-delivering power-unit.

Despite the limitations on car development this year, and the team announcing that their full focus and priority are towards 2022 and the car that is to be built under the new aero regulations, the team was able to recover some performance, introducing a new power unit mid season, and finishing third in the Teams' Championships having beaten McLaren to it.

Speaking of the new car, Mattia Binotto claimed that the team has many innovations embedded into the 2022 charger, that is yet to be named.

"If I look at the 2022 car, and the 2022 power unit, believe me there is a lot of innovation in it," he told Autosport.

"I think that the way that the entire engineering team has faced the new design, the new project, and the 2022 regulations, which were a big discontinuity, was certainly with a more open mind than before. I can myself measure it by looking at the car itself, the way it's progressing, and certainly with the amount of innovation we put in it.

"On the power unit, it is significantly different to the current one except the hybrid," Binotto went on. "For the hybrid, we introduced it in 2021, as we anticipated what would have been the 2022 rules.

"There will be some changes to the hybrid system for 2022, first for regulations, because more sensors are required from the FIA in all the systems for better policing. But the overall system is very similar to the one we've got and the one we raced at the end of the season," he explained.

"But the rest, especially on the internal combustion engine, I have to say is significantly different. We've got a new fuel, which is the 10 percent ethanol, which somehow changed a lot the combustion.

"We are all losing more or less 20 horsepower, which means somehow that the combustion itself is quite changed. So there were a lot of opportunities in development on the power unit and we changed it quite a lot," the Ferrari boss revealed.

Binotto then proceeded to talk about the chassis of the new car saying: "I think that the way we approached the exercise was really open minded.

"And when looking at the car concept, what was possible or not, it is not only the external shapes but whatever you could have done under the bodywork, in terms of layout, in terms of suspension design in terms of full architecture, including as well the power-unit and its architecture.

"I think that the team made significant innovations and the overall design that we are now finalising is quite different to the 2021 project," the 52-year-old pointed out.

Binotto revealed during Ferrari's annual end-of-year Christmas media event, the tentative date on which they are planning their 2022 charger.

"The car will be presented middle of February," he said. "We have not decided yet the date. From the 16th to the 18th of February, that will be the date, but it’s something that will be finalised in the next weeks."

Ferrari's driver lineup will remain unchanged with Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc driving the team's efforts in the upcoming season, but it remains to be seen whether the 2022 Red Machine will be good enough for the two talented young drivers to be fighting at the front of the F1 grid.