Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari
It was another year of what could have been for Ferrari. The Maranello based team showed tremendous pace on occasion during qualifying, but failed to convert many a great starting position including 7 pole positions for Leclerc and Sainz.
On an off weekend for the champions Red Bull in Singapore, Ferrari pounced and took the victory in the hands of Carlos Sainz. However with four race wins in 2022, 2023 seems like a step backwards for the Scuderia. Ferrari also lost out the second position in the Constructors Championship to Mercedes by three points to compound a tough season, given that Mercedes were very critical of their own cars performance this year.
Photo Credit: Scuderia Ferrari
As Ferrari have gone back to the drawing board with their 2024 challenger, the team hopes to iron out the set up issues that hampered them, particularly in the race. Carlos Sainz is hopeful the work done by his team with come up trumps and is positive about how the car feels in the simulator.
“I think we’re going to need to wait until testing. I think it’s incredibly difficult to know. The car in the simulator is behaving differently, for sure,” said the Spaniard
While Sainz is positive about how the car feels in the simulator, he is dubious about the team’s progress until they are on the track in Bahrain.
“But I think until we put the car in 100 kilos [race fuel] and used tyres, it’s going to be impossible to see how the car is actually treating the tyres, treating the pace and how our race pace is going to be affected. That we will only know in Bahrain when we put it on track. In the meantime, we can just focus on adding performance to that car in the wind tunnel and trying to make it better.”
Having the car more consistent in race trim is what the team are focusing on this year to try and convert qualifying positions into results.
“We understood it and now we just put it on track and we try to maximise it every weekend. I think we are doing a much better job of that. It’s almost unbelievable that these swings in performance can happen. But it is the Formula 1 of nowadays. Now we need to focus on making sure we understand why the car there is strong and why so weak in other types of circuits and corners,” concluded 29 year old Sainz.
