"Oh, my God, where did they find that?" - Red Bull left Ferrari surprised with their 'Muhammad Ali approach' to resurgence in 2022

Red Bull's turnaround after a lackluster start to the 2022 campaign was something to praise, and the same has been acknowledged by Ferrari's senior performance engineer Jock Clear.

Clear was left surprised and impressed by Red Bull's 'Muhammad Ali approach' to recovering from early setbacks in 2022. The Milton Keynes-based outfit used a combination of weight reduction and aero improvements in their RB18 to pull ahead of all competition right after the summer break after a slow start to the campaign. Ferrari couldn't come back with a response, especially when it stopped car development because of cost cap limits.

Clear said:

“I think that’s probably Red Bull’s strength this year, as they look to have been flexible. There were times when it was a bit of a Muhammad Ali approach. It looked like you’ve got them on the ropes and they just squirm a bit and come out and ‘bang’. And you are like: ‘Oh, my God, where did they find that?’”

Clear added:

“I think that’s just the experience they’ve had as world champions. And that’s what we have to get used to doing. This year has been a great help. We’ve been at the front, we’ve been fighting at the front. We’ve learned a huge amount this year and we’re on a steep learning curve, as are all the teams.”

Jock Clear feels that, other than the improvements required in the car, the team must watch how they spend their resources throughout the campaign, as the team wishes to return under the cost cap. He said:

“The difficulty is to know where you’re going to be spending your money most efficiently and most effectively. And that has to take a little bit of planning. Of course, as that planning plays out, you learn that maybe you took some wrong decisions earlier on for a path you’re now on. Red Bull have obviously done a very good job of reacting to where they’ve seen the pressure, but not losing sight of the fact that they have to focus on just bringing performance to the car.”

He continued:

“And I think from our point of view, we’ve done everything we planned to do this year. But it’s a relative sport. So yeah, we have underperformed compared to Red Bull in the second half of the year, but you would say that Mercedes have left it all too late, if you see what I mean. Between the three teams, you’ve got us maybe pushing a bit too early on, Mercedes pushing a bit late, and Red Bull striking the right balance. And we have to learn from that.”

Ferrari's 2022 season was a success all things considered, but they will look to make improvements to their car and strategies to climb further up the table.

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Ferrari stopped developing their car to avoid becoming Red Bull - “It was not a choice”

Ferrari's former boss, Mattia Binotto, claimed after the 2022 F1 Brazilian GP that his team had stopped developing their car this season as they had reached the cost cap limit. He claimed that the pause in the development of their car "was not a choice".

The halt in development eventually turned out to be the reason behind Ferrari's slowdown in the second half of the 2022 F1 season. It not only let Red Bull pull further ahead of the Maranello-based team, but also enabled Mercedes to catch up and steal podium finishes.

Binotto had said:

“It was not a choice; we simply finished the money for the budget cap. So simply we were at the cap. [There was] no more opportunity of developing the car, so we simply stick where we were.”

After Red Bull were handed a penalty for breaching the 2021 F1 season's cost cap, other teams became even more aware of their expenditure. Ferrari, too, didn't want to end up paying that hefty fine, hence, they opted for a halt. The Scuderia, however, claim to have used their resources to make improvements to their car for the 2023 season. Hopefully, next season will be more of a challenge for the runaway champions of the season, Red Bull.