“25 maybe 30 seconds is the gap”– Ferrari could become untouchable against Red Bull and Mercedes

Ferrari could be almost 25-30 seconds ahead of Red Bull and Mercedes if they can lower their downforce, even more, claims a neutral engineer.

Ferrari had an empathic win in Melbourne on Sunday. The win keeps the Maranello based team clear off Red Bull and Mercedes in the constructors’ table with three races already gone.

The next race will be in Imola, one of Ferrari’s home races, and they would really want to win there. Thus, it has been reported that Ferrari could be even faster than its rivals. So much that they can be claimed as “the untouchable”.

A neutral engineer claims that if Ferrari could have had as lower downforce as Red Bull, the championship leaders could have been 25-30 seconds ahead of Red Bull at Albert Park.

#AUSGP: 25 forse 30 secondi è il gap che Leclerc avrebbe inflitto a Verstappen, 50 sec alla Mercedes.
Un Ing neutrale ha rivelato: se potranno abbassare l’auto come fa RedBull è possibile che diventino imprendibili @formu1a__uno #F1 https://t.co/aKcwUc9wcS

— Giuliano Duchessa (@GiulyDuchessa) April 11, 2022

Though, Red Bull also failed to optimize its car this weekend. Max Verstappen suffered from massive graining and also faced a fuel leak problem that led to his retirement from the race.

 “I think Ferrari was super strong today,” said Sergio Perez. “However, we put our effort into it as we weren’t able to progress in the changes made between Friday and Saturday. We took the wrong directions with the car .”

Also read: Charles Leclerc takes a cheeky dig at George Russell and Mercedes after the 2022 Australian GP

Ferrari now aims for the championship

The battle between Ferrari and Red Bull is now looking one-sided, with the Milton-Keynes-based team looking to solve its reliability issues. On the other hand, Mercedes is yet to recover from its deficit.

Though, in Australia, even Ferrari faced a few issues with porpoising. The Maranello-based team would want to solve that if they fancy competing for the championship ahead.

“I don’t know why, but I’m not very sensitive to porpoising,” Leclerc said after his win. “If you look at it from the outside, it looks bad. However, in the car, it doesn’t bother me too much. In terms of performance, only at the entrance to turn 9.”

“Of course, it’s definitely something we want to eliminate, to avoid bouncing around corners which can be a problem,”  concluded the Monegasque.

Also read: Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz looks back on a horror outing at the 2022 Australian GP

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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