Back to fourth place
The performance seen at the Baku City Circuit was only a fleeting illusion. In Miami, Scuderia Ferrari has returned to the “ranks” that currently see it in fourth place in the Constructors’ Standings and fifth in the Drivers’ Standings with Carlos Sainz, seventh with his Maranello teammate Charles Leclerc, ahead of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur, ahead of the 2023 Formula 1 championship, had emphasized that Bahrain would not change the Italian side’s season, but five races represent a sufficient “sample” to certify that at the moment the SF-23 is not even remotely a world championship car, certainly less so than the F1-75 was at the same point in the season 12 months ago.
In the race at the Miami International Autodrome in Florida, USA, Ferrari did not keep up with Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin and lost ground to the Mercedes of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, who in the second stint were able to respectively overtake Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, as the Ferrari drivers were ahead of them on the starting grid.
A verdict difficult to accept for the Maranello team, which presented a new floor in Miami, the first part of an update package that will give a definitive verdict on a design philosophy that may need to be changed in view of the 2024 Formula 1 campaign.
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An SF-23 sensitive to the wind
“I talked about it with Carlos too, the car lacks consistency – the words of Charles Leclerc reported by the Spanish newspaper AS – in the same corner I would go from a huge oversteer to an equally evident understeer. In high-speed corners, I had a lot of bouncing, but it only happened in the race, not the rest of the weekend. The car is very sensitive to the wind, and we suffer a lot for this. Compared to last year, Red Bull must have found something more in terms of performance in the race, the Aston Martin is a very different car from the one that raced in 2022, and Mercedes was already stronger in the race than in qualifying a year ago. We have a lot of work to do.” – Charles Leclerc pointed out.
Carlos Sainz in the first stint with medium tires was able to keep the gap to Sergio Perez to just five seconds in 18 laps, a positive aspect to build on, although it should not be forgotten that the medium tire was not the best in the race since it did not hold up against the hard tire, and Sergio Perez probably managed it too much in a difficult start to the GP to read for Checo, given that his direct rival, Max Verstappen, was making a comeback with a different compound than his. “In the first stint, I fought with Fernando Alonso,” added Carlos Sainz, “but then to be more than 20 seconds behind in the second stint is difficult to accept.”
With the hard tire, in fact, and also due to some mistakes, the performance of the Spanish driver lost a lot of brilliance.
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