The Ferrari F1 team is back at the front of the grid fighting for wins and championships this season. For the past two seasons, they have been fighting in the midfield and trying to resolve their issues. One of the main reasons they found themselves in the midfield was their engine settlement with the FIA in late 2019.

The Italian team found a clever way to make their engine faster than other rivals. This meant that they had an advantage over other teams on the straights. FIA had “suspicions [the Ferrari engine was] not operating within the limits of the FIA regulations at all times“. Ferrari has always rejected this conclusion.

But when their rivals filed a complaint, Ferrari’s engine progress went away over time.

Ferrari team principal discusses the 2019 engine settlement with FIA

The Italian team had a settlement with FIA to not make things public. Since then, they have been fighting to get their way back to the top of the field. But discussing and commenting on the 2019 engine situation is still a bit difficult for the Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto.

“That’s in the past; I prefer not to talk about it anymore. However, what we were doing at the time was pushing somehow the line of interpretations. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t illegal, or we would have been disqualified,” said Binotto.

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The settlement between Ferrari and the FIA did not please the other teams on the grid, such as Red Bull and Mercedes. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner even mentioned that the whole situation leaves a sour taste for him.

Christian Horner still not over the 2019 engine settlement

Horner mentioned it is still unclear what discussed was between the governing body of F1 and the Prancing Horses.

“The whole thing has left quite a sour taste. Obviously, you can draw your own conclusions from Ferrari’s current performance. There are races that we should have won last year, arguably, if they had run with an engine that seems to be quite different to what performance they had last year,” said the Red Bull team boss.

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We may never know what was in the settlement between FIA and Ferrari, but it certainly affected the performance of the Italian team. But they are back at the front of the grid after two tough seasons fighting against Red Bull in 2022 for the constructors’ championship.