world champions, drivers or construc-
tors. They have proved to be very strong
teams in the past and had a second of
advantage at the end of last year.
“As Ferrari, we should try to be at
least outsiders, try to be as close as we
can. Certainly I hope that it will be very
close at the end of the year.”
Towards the end of last year,
Christian Horner, the Red Bull team
principal, half joked that he thought
Ferrari would win the championship
this year as his team had been locked in
such a fierce battle with Mercedes that
their attention had been diverted away
from working on this season’s car and
taking full advantage of the consider-
able change in regulations.
Horner had a point. While Red Bull
and Mercedes locked horns during
2021, Ferrari were able to turn their
attention fairly early to the 2022 car,
giving them something of an edge.Ferrari also have, arguably, the most
exciting driver line-up in the paddock.
Leclerc is the talented youngster on
whom they have pinned their hopes to
win their first title since 2008, when
they won the constructors’ champion-
ship, a year after Kimi Raikkonen had
claimed their last drivers’ crown. The
24-year-old Leclerc has a £10-million-
a-year deal to remain with the team
through to the end of 2024 but it is un-
derstood that he is in talks to extend
that to 2026.
Carlos Sainz joined the team last year
and few would have expected him to
beat Leclerc, but that is what he did,
finishing fifth in the championship, two
places ahead his team-mate, which
helped Ferrari to claim third spot in the
constructors’ championship.
Ferrari have been impressed with the
27-year-old Spaniard, who moved near
to Maranello in Italy so he could be inFerrari were strong in pre-season testing and the team principal Binotto, below, has faith in his drivers Sainz, left, and LeclercIn recent years the Prancing Horse
hasn’t quite had the spring in its step
that the team’s supporters, the tifosi,
would have liked, but after two success-
ful pre-season tests it may be that
Ferrari will be in contention this season.
That was the topic of conversation up
and down the paddock, both at the first
test in Barcelona and the second test
last week in Bahrain.
For a sport obsessed with spending
millions to make a car go a tenth of a
second faster, it’s difficult to ignore
completely the timesheets from the
first test — but that is almost certainly
what is required with the teams still
getting to know their new cars.
Charles Leclerc was fourth-quickest
for Ferrari but the metric that really
matters is the lap count and Ferrari
were the only team to top 400 laps over
the course of those three days in
Barcelona, with 439, some 46 more
than Mercedes, who clocked the
second-highest mileage.
The number was slightly lower in
Bahrain, with Mercedes completing the
most laps with 385, but Ferrari were still
impressively consistent with 349.
What that shows is that Ferrari did
not struggle with reliability, and regu-
larly topped the timesheets in Bahrain,
where the clock was more closely
watched as the teams ran their qualify-
ing simulation laps at roughly the
same time of the day that qualifying
will take place on Saturday
at the season-opening
grand prix, also in Bah-
rain.
There is now a
real belief that
Ferrari could be
in a position to
break the
dominance of
Red Bull and
Mercedes.
Lewis Hamilton raised concerns on
the final day of testing in Bahrain when
he said he did not expect Mercedes to
be fighting for wins at the start of the
season. Rather, the seven-times world
champion said, it would be Ferrari chal-
lenging Red Bull in the early races.
Ferrari have moved to play down any
suggestion of success this year, with
Mattia Binotto, their team principal,
insisting they are outsiders. “I think
it has been six positive days,”
he said. “But in terms of
performance it’s very
difficult to judge. I still
believe that both
Red Bull and
Mercedes are
the main
[favourites].
They are the
ones that won
last year, bothLewis Hamilton has revealed that he
is in the process of changing his name
to incorporate his mother’s maiden
name so it will be part of his legacy.
Speaking at the 2020 Dubai Expo
before the first grand prix of the
season this weekend, the 37-year-old
seven-times world champion said:
“I’m really proud of my family’s name,
Hamilton. None of you might know
that my mum’s [sur]name is
Larbalestier and I’m just about to put
that in my name. I don’t understand
the whole idea of why, when people
get married, the woman loses her
name. I want her name to continue
with the Hamilton name.”
Hamilton’s parents, Anthony and
Carmen, split when he was little and
he lived mostly with his father and his
stepmother, Linda. When Hamilton
received his knighthood at the end of
last year, he took his mother to the
investiture as his one and only guest.Sport
Ferrari in pole position for title bid
Rebecca Clancy
Motor Racing
CorrespondentJAMES MOY/PA‘I’m changing
name for Mum’
Rebecca Clancythe team’s factory as much as possible.
The team are expected to offer him a
new deal, with his present one expiring
at the end of this year.
Both drivers have made it clear that
their priority is to work for the team,
not themselves, and return the Scuder-
ia to the top. It would be easy to dismiss
that as just the usual PR, but one of
Binotto’s main points in meetings is
that no one is bigger than the team.
Ferrari had strong pre-season tests in
2017 and 2018, when they came out of
the blocks strongly and were fighting
for the championship before implod-
ing. Mercedes went on to win both titles
with races to spare.
No one would want to see a repeat of
that and Formula One is better if
Ferrari are back at the front and
challenging Red Bull and Mercedes.
We don’t have long to wait to find out
just how good they really are.585 Tuesday March 15 2022 | the times