Scuderia Ferrari did not seem completely happy with their first day of 2023 Formula 1 pre-season testing on Thursday at the Bahrain International Circuit, after suffering a few minor issues on the SF-23 car and most importantly following the first comparisons with the Red Bull of Max Verstappen.
Carlos Sainz was straight out on track in the morning on Thursday when the lights went green at the end of pit lane and he completed 72 laps before the break for lunch, which saw him go second quickest behind the Dutchman, who seemed a step ahead of everybody at this early stage of pre-season. Charles Leclerc took over for the Maranello team during the afternoon and evening session: the Monegasque completed the first testing day and finished just 0.014s slower than his team mate after adding 64 more laps to the Italian side’s total mileage for Thursday.
Despite some worrying reports in the media, Charles Leclerc pointed out that there was no reason for concern, as Ferrari did not focus on performance in the first day of testing at the Sakhir circuit
“For now, we are really not focusing on [Red Bull’s Day One] because we had very different programmes yesterday. We are happy with what we have done, we have no idea how much fuel they have in the car and we have no idea how much they are pushing there. There are so many questions, so we don’t focus on that, we focus on ourselves. We’ll see what happens in the next few days.” – the Monegasque driver explained, as he confirmed that he was unconcerned by the Red Bull start in Bahrain.
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“No need to worry. Yesterday we did all the scans that have to be done to correlate the track with the factory. All the data collected is in line with what we expected. Today we will start to focus more on the feeling of the SF-23. The data is in line with our expectations. The car is better than the 2022 one, let’s see next week when we have everything at 100%!” – the Scuderia Ferrari driver concluded.
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