F1 | Ferrari anticipates 2022 by using the 'Superfast' engine in 2021
The Prancing Horse aims to get back about thirty power horses and works on a visionary new engine for the next season
When the Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto said that the Prancing Horse team would come back stronger in 2021, many people were reluctant to believe that. To be fair, the Maranello-based team has been so far the biggest delusion of this weird season. The Italians had to keep their engine lower than the last year’s one to expiate the FIA’s decisions and they didn’t managed to attenuate the issues.
What is interesting is that the same engine, which provided so many problems this year, could be the team’s pride in 2021. Binotto did just anticipate that Ferrari is planning to bring the 2022 prototype on the next season. We should expect a sort of “Superfast” engine, which could be useful to study the future of Formula 1.
The new engine will not be a revolutionary version of the actual one but it will count on new solutions that were originally planned for the 2022 season. The turbo will be smaller indeed, to help the MGU-H improve its performances by recovering some extra electrical energy but there’s even more. Ferrari indeed, plans to add an innovative intercooler too.
Always pushing to improve 👊#essereFerrari 🔴 @ManpowerGroupIT pic.twitter.com/1QxXpvalz6
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) November 19, 2020
The “Superfast” – that’s how the new engine is called internally – will adopt a combustion chamber which will be able to provide a very fast TDC. This visionary view comes extremely close to the diesel technology but without using the spark plugs.
As for the exhaust pipes, Ferrari will build an engine that will use future technology to come back to a “vintage” philosophy. The “Superfast” engine will indeed come back to the tumble technology instead of the actual swirl one.
The Prancing Horse aims to fill the gap with Mercedes by adding more kinetic energy, and wants to do it designing a new plug which should be able not only accelerating the flux but redirecting it by adding some pressure. This solution might help the engine to turn on in a quicker way but delimitating the area in which the flame could expand itself, eliminating like that some dangerous detonations.
Will this new technology help the Italian team to fill the embarrassing gap between them and Mercedes? We will have to wait until March, when the 2021 season of Formula One will begin, to find out if Ferrari will be a step forward from its opponents or if this will be only a broken hope.
