F1 News
This is how much horsepower the top three teams can gain next year
- GPblog.com
Due to reliability problems with the power unit at Ferrari last year, the team was forced to downgrade the output of its car. Now it appears that if Ferrari gets this problem fixed it could become a fast and dangerous player in the competition again this year.
Ferrari seemed to be extremely fast at the start of the 2022 season and a serious threat to Red Bull Racing. However, the inferior functioning of the so-called Turbulent Jet Ignition system got them into trouble and, together with strategic mistakes, the season for the Italian team turned into trouble. If Ferrari manages to do something about its technical problems, the engine's power output, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport, increases by as much as thirty horsepower - a bigger increase than for Mercedes and Red Bull.
Less horsepower for Mercedes and Red Bull
At Mercedes and Red Bull, the focus this year is also on improving the reliability of the power unit (even further). Mercedes does this by focusing on reducing internal mechanical friction and at Honda, engine supplier for Red Bull, it is mainly about better energy dissipation. Respectively, according to the Italian medium, this results in 16 hp and 10 hp for the teams. These numbers are lower than Ferrari's, and if each team manages to get the most out of its engines, the battle for the world title could be close.
However, Alpine says it does not see any improvements with their power unit and therefore doubts that this increase in horsepower at the other teams is really based purely on an improvement in PU reliability.