Ferrari’s 2023 season hasn’t been off to a good start.
In fact, the first round in Bahrain saw the winner of the 2022 race Charles Leclerc retire due to an ECU issue, which had also happened before the race, forcing the Monegasque driver to take up a penalty for new components in Jeddah already as only two batteries are allowed for the whole season.
On the other hand, Carlos Sainz Jr managed to finish the race, but lost the battle for the podium to Fernando Alonso in his first official race for Aston Martin and had to be satisfied with a fourth place.
However, the Spanish winner of the British GP is convinced that this time round in Saudi Arabia Ferrari can achieve a podium, as he said during his pre weekend press conference: “I want to think so, yeah.”
Sainz, in his third season for the Italian team, believes that many track characteristics and the first upgrades the team will bring can lead to a more successful round, even if it might not be enough for the top spots:
“The track is completely different to Bahrain. The [asphalt], the high-speed nature, the wing level that we will run – everything is just a bit different compared to Bahrain. I have the feeling that we’re going to be a bit more competitive.”
“Enough to beat the Red Bulls? Given how competitive and how strong they were in Bahrain, it’s going to be extremely difficult.”
A better performance will be key to improve the team and the fans’ morale after the unimpressive Bahrain outing, even if the Spanish driver isn’t feeling his best as he is recovering from a cold.
“It’s not the way you want to start a season – with a penalty in race two. Breaking the battery, the ECU, in the first weekend, clearly we are not happy with that and we identified it as a weakness,” highlighted Sainz, who has also admitted that the Scuderia had been “surprised” by the rather odd electrical issue Leclerc suffered from.
“But it’s the first time we’ve seen this failure in a very, very long time. So, it caught us by surprise. We’re putting things in place to fix it and I’m pretty sure that we are capable of fixing that in the short term.”
The former McLaren driver doesn’t sugarcoat the truth, but is definitely more positive for the upcoming round:
“So, it’s a bad situation but now we can only look forwards and improve it and make sure that we are also more competitive this weekend. It was a tough first weekend for the team, but in general I think we got out of it with the maximum we could’ve done.”
Not all hopes to fight for the championship win are lost yet in Sainz’s opinion, who recalls the disastrous 2022 Bahrain inaugural round Red Bull overcame to then win both titles.
“Obviously, Charles’s penalty coming into here is not ideal, but it’s only the first race. If something taught us [from] 2022, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. So, we’re going to try and build up from there and especially now kick the developments in and try and improve the car as much as possible, try and improve from where we’ve started,” he concluded.
Photo credits: Scuderia Ferrari
