Christian Horner believes this F1 team is a "dark horse" for 2022 season

Christian Horner believes Ferrari’s challenger for the 2022 F1 season is a “dark horse” with serious potential to challenge Mercedes and Red Bull for the title.

Despite the Scuderia struggling to perform in the last two seasons, Horner believes the regulation reset from 2022 could help the Italian team close the gap to its rivals.

Speaking in an interview with TalkSport, ahead of the Barcelona pre-season testing, the Red Bull team principal said:

“I think they [Ferrari] are the dark horse. They were not in the championship fight last year, but with big regulation changes this year they probably started earlier than every team. They been a sleeping giant for a few years now. You get the impression they might just be waking up.”

After a miserable 2020 campaign when they could only manage P6 in the constructors championship, Ferrari bounced back in 2021, beating McLaren to finish as the third-best team on the grid.

But, despite their intense championship battle with McLaren last season, they stopped developing their 2021 car to focus exclusively on the sweeping new regulations that have come into effect since 2022.

During the launch of the F-75 early last week, Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto was optimistic of their chances in 2022. The new car follows an aggressive “out-of-the-box” aerodynamic philosophy that Binotto has called “brave”. With a new challenger, the Scuderia will hope to finally break their winless streak over the last two seasons and return to the front of the grid.

Ferrari have reportedly adopted rival’s ideas into their 2022 F1 car

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has revealed that the team has already incorporated ideas from a rival team into their 2022 charger. The Italian says the team has approached the new regulations with an open-mind and will not shy away from copying better ideas from rival teams.

Speaking in an interview with Crash.net, during the launch of the F1-75, Binotto said:

"We will see if there are any interesting ideas we can adopt. On the F1-75, there is already a detail from a car that was presented in the past few days, and especially in this first phase we will all be watching each other very closely.”

With the launch of the F1-75, whose strikingly good looks have been well-received by fans, there is optimism among the tifosi of the team’s potential in the upcoming season. Fans are eager to see if the car will be able to perform well enough to match its good looks.