Ferrari thought they could compete for the title last year after winning two of the first three races. However, things badly went south as the season went on.
While they did not expect to compete for the title this year, they were much further off than they expected at the beginning of the year.
Nonetheless, things are looking up. Ferrari broke Red Bull’s unbeaten streak in Singapore, got two pole positions and multiple podiums in recent races with Carlos Sainz. With this upward momentum, Charles Leclerc seems optimistic that next year brings a lot of hope based on their development of this year’s car.
Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari
“After Monza, we understood more things which are good for this year – even though it will be a small step in the right direction – but mostly for designing next year’s car, which is positive.
“The 2024 project is very different to the car we have this year. And this [run of form], with everything we’ve learned so far, it reaffirms that it’s a good choice what we’ve done for next year. And then the more we learn, the better it is for doing the last few details for next year’s car. So it’s super-important.”
While the team is still analysing on a race-to-race basis, Leclerc knows that it’s a slow build to get to glory and that each race serves as a learning situation to move towards 2024.
“It was really good to understand that also before the end of the season because we’ve still got quite a few races, so we can maybe push a bit more in that direction.”
Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari
The budget cap remains a hindrance to Ferrari’s attempts to catch Red Bull Racing, but Leclerc says that the growth that Ferrari has made in developing next year’s car has yet to be seen.
“You need to be a bit more patient, but I guess it’s the same for everybody.”
“We’ve still got the simulator to test those things, so I can virtually be excited until next year. In the meantime, I just need to do the best job possible with what we have at the moment.”
Leclerc remained honest and said that he does not know what the car is going to look like, but that it will look very different to this year’s iteration.
“To be honest, for now, I don’t have the vision yet because it’s still very early days. I only report Fred [Vasseur, team principal’s] words that we’re saying that the project is very different for next year.
“As drivers, you of course say what are the weaknesses of this car. The engineers are working, they came back to me telling me that it will be quite different for next year. And now I’m waiting for testing the car as quickly as possible on the simulator.”
Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari
The optimism continued for Enrico Cardile, head of Aero Development. He says that Ferrari’s new design for 2024 is an evolution of what went wrong in 2023, and that it will serve to bring the team forward.
“It [2024 car] will be very different, because developing this year’s car we realised that some architectural choices we made were not right.
“It was constraining the development too much.
“Next year’s car will not be an evolution of this year’s car like this year’s car has been compared to last year’s car.
“It will be a brand new car – different chassis with different design, different rear end to allow our aero [department] to better develop the car to achieve their targets.”
