Picture Credits Scuderia Ferrari
Scuderia Ferrari fans are hopeful that updates will see their car, SF-23, fighting back at the front. Team Principal Frederic Vasseur though has made it clear that the current package needs to be maximised before being concerned about what performance any updates will bring.
In 2022, Scuderia Ferrari arrived in Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix having seen their pair of drivers on the podium the previous two races of that F1 season. In the case of Charles Leclerc, the Monégasque driver already had a 2022 F1 GP victory to his name having been victorious in Bahrain. Fast forward to a year later and it is a very different story with the Tifosi seeing their beloved team P4 in the current F1 Constructors’ Championship and already 61 points behind reigning Champions Red Bull Racing. While the Milton Keynes based racing outfit currently set the standard and look set for another double title season, Ferrari is well off the pace.
It could be considered that Scuderia Ferrari’s 2023 F1 season is yet to get started as penalties for replacing parts have obviously hindered any potential assault on the F1 Drivers’ Championship by their talismanic driver Charles Leclerc.
Even so, the Monégasque racer is far from happy with his 2023 challenger as he told media post-race in Jeddah “overall the pace is just not good enough.”
His teammate, Carlos Sainz on the other hand was very vocal saying “I trust my team, I trust the development plan.”
On the question of development, Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Frederic Vasseur was asked post-race in Jeddah if the team had anything new on the way for their car in Australia. His reply showed that updates will be continuous, but the focus is to extract potential from the current package.
“I think that we’ll have some small updates coming next week in Australia but…the main issue we have today is to be always all over the weekend to be at our maximum. But then it’s the case that we are not able to extract 100 percent of the car in every single session. We have to be focused on this before we think about updates.” said Vasseur.
Having been in the fight on numerous occasions in 2022, it is unclear where Ferrari’s pace has gone this year as there are several teams in front of them now. None more so than the 2023 dark horse of Aston Martin which is far quicker than the prancing horse at present. Fred Vasseur was told during his post-race press conference in Saudi Arabia that his driver, Carlos Sainz, had told the written media that the team said upgrades are coming but he didn’t want to be disrespectful to the team and say when that would be. Therefore, could Vasseur provide further insight?
“I think like every single team of the grid we are bringing updates with every single weekend. We have the declaration to the FIA on the Thursday morning and you can see that every single team is bringing updates and we continue to do it and it’s not because we are not performing, or we are performing that we will change the plan. You know that the updates that you will see next week in Australia the parts are already in the production. It’s not because I will come back tomorrow morning to the factory, and I will say ‘guys we have to push that we will have updates next week in the Australia’ – it’s not working like this.”
Something that is working at Ferrari though is their pitstops. The team have had the fastest pitstops for two consecutive race weekends. Due to the fact that Albert Park, proves challenging for drivers to overtake on – pitstop efficiency could be key to success in the heat of battle.
For his part, Frederic Vasseur continues to understandably find positives where he can, but should his team struggle down under, it may be quite some time before Scuderia Ferrari is back on top.
