The future is uncertain for Ferrari after team principal Mattia Binotto's resignation.
But while there is upheaval on the pit wall, the Italians may not have anything to worry about from a car performance perspective in 2023. That is according to Guenther Steiner, who has shared some optimism about the Ferrari power units after a chat with Binotto.
The Ferrari cars were quick this year but, especially in the middle of the season, they were plagued by reliability issues. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz had races ruined by engines blowing up, while customers Haas and Alfa Romeo also felt the effects.
Binotto said over the summer that the progress made on this year's power unit was the most he had seen "in more than 25 years in Maranello". And, after a chat with the outgoing Ferrari chief last week, Haas team principal Steiner gave an encouraging sign of what to expect in 2023.
"On Thursday I met Mattia Binotto and he told me that next season's engine will be the bomb," he said during an appearance at the Lorenzo Bandini Trophy Awards in Faenza. "In Emilia Romagna, there is a lot of support for Ferrari. And if [the engine] is competitive, it will be positive for us too."
Haas made improvements in 2022 compared to the previous two seasons, during which they were almost entirely uncompetitive. They held off the challenge of AlphaTauri to finish eighth in the constructors' championship, and are hoping for even better next year after a large cash injection from new main sponsors MoneyGram.
While improvements must be made on their own car design to achieve that, their chances also rest on whether or not they can rely on their Ferrari-supplied engines. "I don't think it's completely resolved, I think they are working on it," Steiner told Mirror Sport in an exclusive interview in late-October.
He went on to seemingly rule out the prospect of switching to an alternative supplier if problems persist, adding: "It is not completely out of our hands because we can go somewhere else, but that is maybe a worse decision for us. There are always pros and cons to everything.
"In the moment when it happens it is frustrating, but then you think about it – I'd rather have a power unit which has power with reliability issues, than starting on a Friday knowing you don't have the power and you can't do anything about it. At least when you have reliability issues but good power, you can start to be positive about it.
"The only thing we could do is go to somebody else, but that is difficult as well because the neighbour's grass is always greener, until you get there. We have an agreement and Ferrari was always good with us. We work well together, so at the moment we don't want to change."
