Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz has urged the Maranello team to evaluate and address the “concept issue” with their SF-23 single seater, after Red Bull proved to be completely dominant in the start of the 2023 Formula 1 championship.
After realizing that it would not be able to challenge Red Bull in the battle for the Formula 1 titles last season, Scuderia Ferrari decided early on in the year to focus on the current F1 campaign, which means that the Italian side was expected to provide a greater challenge to the Austrian side this season. But the on track reality was very different: Ferrari did not manage to score even a podium finish in the first to rounds, while Red Bull went on to easily secure a one-two finish both in Bahrain and in Saudi Arabia. Red Bull in 2023, but have so far been unable to finish on the podium in the first two races.
Mercedes has also been in a difficult situation and its W14 lack of frontrunning pace determined team principal Toto Wolff to admit that they will look into shifting to a different design direction, especially following the performance of Aston Martin in the start of the season: Fernando Alonso finished on the podium twice, with a car that has many similarities to the Red Bull RB19 single-seater.
As Scuderia Ferrari is currently fourth in the Constructors’ Championship ahead of the Australian Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz was asked if the Maranello team’s problems are linked to setup configuration or indeed to the SF-23 car concept.
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“When someone has such a big advantage like Red Bull has, it’s confirmed that it is a concept problem,” – the Spaniard explained during his Thursday media interview – “Red Bull were right and we weren’t. We carried ourselves a bit with last year’s car, which was very fast on one lap pace. At the end of the year we could already see that on race pace was a step behind from RB. And this year, with the regulation changes, it’s clear that has been worse for our concept, and probably we need to look somewhere else.” – Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz concluded.
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