After the disappointing American weekend, it is getting darker and darker in Maranello. According to the latest rumors, in fact, the new floor introduced by Scuderia Ferrari in Miami would only have been worth a tenth in terms of lap time gains, unlike the package brought by Red Bull at the Baku City Circuit which further improved the already impressive RB19 single-seater by 3 tenths. The red car therefore continues to be behind not only on the track but also in development.
Ferrari: the new floor introduced during the Miami weekend was worth only one tenth
Reporting the rumor about the improvement in lap time of the two teams is the well-informed Formu1a.uno website, which states that the package introduced by the Maranello team was completely cancelled by the one introduced by the Milton Keynes team in the previous weekend at the Baku City Circuit.
Already some rumors before the Miami weekend were talking about a Red Bull that would not have been able to fully exploit the new package in Azerbaijan. This was due to the little time available in the only free practice session given the new sprint format.
After a lot of work in terms of data collection on Friday in Miami, the Anglo-Austrian team would have finally extracted the maximum potential from the updates. Just look at the overwhelming superiority shown by the two drivers in the race to realize this. According to rumors, this package would have been worth a whopping three tenths of a second at the Miami International Autodrome in Florida, USA.
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The SF-23, on the other hand, although it made a step forward on paper compared to Baku, found itself losing further ground to the RB19. Carlos Sainz was 43 seconds behind at the finish line and Charles Leclerc was even 51 seconds behind. An average of about 8-9 tenths of a second lost per lap in the race compared to the two Red Bull cars, which is very worrying.
This is a really alarming fact, considering the high expectations for the first real upgrade introduced on the Ferrari single-seater. In Imola we will see another package of developments, which will culminate with the Barcelona GP. In fact, in the Spanish GP, the Maranello team should make substantial changes to a car that has been incomprehensible so far.
The SF-23 has shown to be a very competitive car at times. Two pole positions conquered in Baku and potentially a third one discarded by Charles Leclerc on Saturday show how the car can be faster than the RB19 in some instances.
The big problem, as stated by Charles Leclerc himself, is being able to stay in the correct operating window for the entire duration of the race weekend. An extremely sensitive car for which Scuderia Ferrari hopes to find consistency of performance in relatively short timeframes.
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