Ferrari has confirmed the team will use their Spec 3 engine at next weekend’s Italian Grand Prix.
The Scuderia has dominated so far in Spa-Francorchamps with their top speed particularly on the Kemmel Straight giving them a huge advantage over Mercedes and Red Bull.
More worryingly for their rivals, the ‘Temple of Speed’ at Monza is likely to suit Ferrari even more and all efforts have been taken to give the team their best chance of a first home win since 2010.
“It is the highest power effect of the year… What that means is you gain 10bhp on your engines and that is two tenths in your pocket,” sporting director Laurent Mekies was quoted by PlanetF1.
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“A lot of people, including ourselves, use it [Monza] to bring their third and last power unit, although you may have seen a lot of our competitors have done that here [at Spa].
“But there is a reason [why Ferrari has waited] – the engine’s performance may drop with mileage, so you want the freshest engine with the higher power effect of the year.”
Ferrari’s customer teams, Haas and Alfa Romeo, got early access to the new engine in Belgium, but the Maranello-based outfit denied using them as guinea pigs.
“It is not useful,” he said on if there was an advantage from testing the engine in other cars first.
“The reason is not to get real data because by the time you introduce a unit it should be reliable, fully reliable and homologated and validated on the dyno.
“The reason we are introducing it is because we are on different scenarios in terms of allocations and in terms of mileage, and certainly by splitting the building of the engines it makes it a lot easier at the factory.”
Ferrari may have a slight concern however, after seeing the new unit in Antonio Giovinazzi’s car fail during qualifying on Saturday.