Having not lived up to pre-season expectations and hype, Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz wanted to point out that no one is “more upset or angry or unhappy about the situation” than the Maranello team itself.
Before the start of the 2023 Formula 1 campaign, Carlos Sainz and his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc were confident they would be able to challenge Max Verstappen and Red Bull for the championship titles this year, under the leadership of new team principal Frederic Vasseur.
However, things started to look bad already from the winter pre-season testing session and after the first three races of the championship, no Ferrari driver has been able to finish on the podium at least once, with Carlos Sainz securing a fourth place best result. This means that ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz is 49 points behind current Formula One World Champion Max Verstappen, while his Maranello team-mate is a further 14 points behind.
Reliability issues have once again affected the Italian side, while the SF-23 also has a very small operating window. Its unbalanced behavior and the tyre degradation issues are clear, determining Carlos Sainz to admit that Ferrari are lacking in all areas when looking at the impressive Red Bull RB19 single-seater, which will most likely help Max Verstappen take his third championship title.
And this is a period no one at the Maranello team can be happy about as confirmed by the Spanish driver:
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“You have to realise that nobody is more upset or angry or unhappy about the situation than every single [team member] here,” he explained, according to Motorsport.com. – “We’re the ones who aren’t happy. We’re the first to not like the situation. And we’re the ones who are going full throttle to turn [the situation] around because it’s also about our egos, our performance.” – the Spaniard added.
“We’re proud to be Ferrari and we want to take Ferrari forward. And sometimes the comments [in the media] are more of a distraction and drag us down rather than helping us.” – Carlos Sainz continued.
Ferrari’s results in the first three rounds include two DNFs for Charles Leclerc, while in Australia, the Italian side ended the race without any points, although Ferrari has asked the FIA to review received by Carlos Sainz in the final stages of the Melbourne race, which sent the Spaniard from fourth place to outside the top ten following the collision with the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso.
Due to the poor start of the season there has been a lot of criticism directed at the Maranello team from the fans and the media, something the 28-year-old points out they really don’t need as the entire team is working on getting their season back on track, with a lot of updates expected for the next races.
“It’s just that [excessive criticism] doesn’t help. And that lack of help isn’t exactly what we need right now. That’s why we try to stay away from such comments. We don’t need any additional distractions or other people who drag us down.” – the Spanish driver added.
Given the new aerodynamic regulations based on ground effect, which were introduced last year, the generation of cars are still in their infancy and teams still need to understand how to maximize their potential.
As a result, Ferrari is confident it can extract a lot more potential from the aerodynamic design of the SF-23 car, even “tonnes” if you ask the new Ferrari chief.
The Italian side is working on introducing a major upgrade package in the next few weeks, most likely at the Imola circuit, which should partially fix the SF-23’s balance problems.
Despite the fact that Fred Vasseur explained the upgrades would not go as far as to be a B-spec challenger, he pointedoutthat “we have a stream of updates for different types of downforce, in Baku it’s not advisable to introduce anything new because there is the sprint race, but in Miami, Imola and Barcelona we will always have updates on the cars, and that was part of the programme. We have made some changes in terms of set-up and the situation in Melbourne has improved, so we will continue in that direction. You will not see a ‘B’ version car, to answer the question, something completely different will not come. We will continue to update and we will do it massively.” – the French manager concluded.
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