I think you're right that what we're seeing is from the settlement, but not as a punishment.6 of 12 wrote: ↑15 Jul 2020, 12:04Is it possible, do you think, that the secret FIA-Ferrari-Deal includes some agreement that all Ferrari PUs have to use ~50hp less for a couple of races as a punishment for sneakily cheating last year? Because the Ferrari PU is so slow (all teams) that it is almost comical.
Rather, I believe the development path Ferrari went on the last 2-3 seasons was ultimately in violation of the rules, and that they continued to iterate on the non-legal innovation, centering the research and development around the idea, including aero (pile on dirty downforce, etc..), culminating in the supreme performance we saw in Spa/Monza.
When FIA determined that they had be contravening the rules for possibly 1-2+ years, they immediately mandated a partial ceasing of offending behaviour, possibly a straightforward software change (resulting in the sudden loss of pace at end of 2019), and then mandated a total removal of any offending parts/structure/operation for following season - this basically removed 2 years of development. So they are quite literally 2 years behind on engine since they had all their development thrown out.
This would explain what we have seen.