Scuderia Ferrari spent Friday free practice for the 2023 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne working on a busy programme with the goal of maximizing all the performance out of the SF-23 challenger in terms of race pace, without however neglecting preparations for the qualifying session, especially considering the fact that it is rather difficult to overtake at this track.
Several set-ups were tested to find out more about the SF-23 car, while allowing the drivers to get reacquainted with the walls and turns of the Albert Park track. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz evaluated all the dry weather compounds Pirelli has made available for the third round of the 2023 F1 championship, as well as the Intermediates, needed in a rain-affected second practice session.
Here are some of the most important comments and impressions from Carlos Sainz after FP2 at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne:
Carlos Sainz on whether he feels that Ferrari took a positive step in the right direction with the setup for Friday practice:
“Well, I think we’re going to have to wait until tomorrow to confirm that, no? Because obviously practice is practice but we did use that FP1 to try some very different things on the car to see if we can find a bit of performance for the package that we have now and we did seem to understand a bit better and to find a couple of things that could help us for the future but until we don’t put it in practice in a proper quali lap, we don’t know.”
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“This Friday was a bit compromised by the rain in FP2, so we decided not to do many laps in the rain, choosing instead to start preparing everything for tomorrow. On the other hand, FP1 was very useful for the team. We went through very different set-up configurations trying to improve the feeling with the car and to get to understand the current package a bit more. We are pushing hard to maximise everything and I look forward to the rest of the weekend.”
Carlos Sainz on where he thinks Scuderia Ferrari will be alongside Red Bull, Aston Martin, and Mercedes in the Australian Grand Prix:
“I think it’s fair to assume that in quali we will play with them but then in the race we should assume also that we should be one step behind like we were in Jeddah, no? But with the steps we are planning to do and that we want to do from the things that we’ve tried to discover this weekend, hopefully that becomes a better situation.”
Carlos Sainz about the traffic on track in Friday practice:
“Yeah, everyone today seemed to be out of phase, it’s probably a feature of the track, the tarmac, not giving us a lot of confidence to push on the first lap so people are doing prep laps, cool down laps, push laps all together mixed. It means that everyone’s doing something different at the same time on track and it’s full of traffic but by the time of quali we should get all in phase with each other and it should be better, hopefully.”
Carlos Sainz on what he hopes to find out about the SF-23 car this weekend:
“Little steps at the moment until the big upgrade does come. We are trying to do small steps and pure optimisation with what we have, which we know is not a lot to fight for or not enough maybe to fight for wins right now but enough to, if we nail everything, to try to get in the top three or maybe top five, no? So focus on that and maximise what we have at the moment.”
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