Despite a staff reshuffle aimed at enhancing communication before the start of the 2023 Formula 1 championship, Carlos Sainz has addressed the criticism surrounding Scuderia Ferrari’s strategy calls in this first part of the season. In his early weeks as Team Principal, Frederic Vasseur made a commitment to identify and rectify the mistakes made during the previous campaign, resulting in significant changes within the strategy department prior to the commencement of the 2023 championship.
Spanish engineer Inaki Rueda transitioned to a factory role in Maranello, while trackside operations are now headed by Ravin Jain. Furthermore, behind-the-scenes adjustments were implemented to foster better communication flow.
However, despite these alterations, the Italian side continues to face scrutiny regarding their race management. This was particularly evident during the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, where they seemed to disregard a strategic plea from Charles Leclerc in terms of tyre choice. Carlos Sainz acknowledges that Scuderia Ferrari’s strategy department has shown “continuous progress” but concedes that the season has not begun as they had envisioned.
“I would say that department is in constant progress and we’re making, I think, a lot of progress. It just hasn’t been an easy year for us,” – the Ferrari driver explained in a recent interview for the media following the Spanish Grand Prix.
Carlos Sainz feels a many of the issues have been caused by the lack of pace shown by the Ferrari SF-23 car especially on Sunday in terms of race pace, due to struggling to fix their tyre management difficulties.
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“Our race pace this year has been a bit worse than our qualifying pace [and] there’s always going to be doubts and criticism about our race execution. I think that makes these first six races a bit more difficult to assess and judge. I do feel the team is doing everything they can, and everything we can, to be as strong as possible on that department. But like always in everything, in every aspect [of F1], there’s margin of improvement and we’re doing it.” – Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz concluded.
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