Three days, 199 laps and many different sensations experienced while driving at the Bahrain International Circuit and in the Sakhir pits. We have seen Charles Leclerc chatting intensely with Chief Engineer and Vehicle Concept David Sanchez and assistant team principal Laurent Mekies, and some facial expressions weren’t the most encouraging for the Tifosi. However, the Maranello team focused on experimenting a lot with the SF-23 in terms of set-ups and the Monegasque did the same with driving styles to figure out which one worked best with the new single-seater. Tests, attempts, experiments: this is what the winter pre-season testing session is for and Charles Leclerc has no reason to be pessimistic. At least not at this early stage of the 2023 Formula 1 championship.
The Ferrari #16 finished fourth on day three of testing, behind Sergio Perez, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas (the latter set the time on C5). At the end of the afternoon session in Bahrain, Charles Leclerc was interviewed by the media and asked to shares his thoughts on the three-day event in Sakhir:
“We have three very intensive days of testing behind us. The first day was all about running big scans and trying to understand how well our data matches what we predicted at the factory. What we learned is that there is quite a good correlation. We focused a lot on set-up work this week and made some good steps forward. I also tried out some different driving styles to test what suits me best in this new car. We’ll be back next week for the opening race of the season and it will be interesting to see where all teams stand in relation to their closest competitors.” – the Monegasque driver said, as reported by the Maranello team’s official website, with the Ferrari man confirming that he had been attempting to adapt to the new car by altering his driving style.
This morning the vice world champion did a lot of running with the Pirelli C3 compound and continued with the work on setting up the single-seater, then he focused on a few laps with the C2 compound to then try a qualifying simulation with the C4 compound: on the final day of pre-season testing he completed 67 laps (the equivalent of 363 km), in total 199 laps and 1,077 km. Thanks to his work and that of Carlos Sainz (417 laps and 2,257 km in total), the Ferrari SF-23 arrives at the starting line with the equivalent of over seven GPs completed.
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