Is it already a Formula 1 season to be throw away? At the Jeddah circuit, Scuderia Ferrari’s SF-23 car went slower than last year’s F1-75. The numbers are showing no mercy and point to a situation that is incredible. The single-seater that should have allowed Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to fight for the two world championships has an unexpectedly poor race pace.
It is clear that there is something not right in the performance of the car, which has also been overtaken by the disappointing Mercedes. Red Bull, as it now seems obvious to everyone, manages to maintain the best ride height on its RB19 which, in addition to being the closest to the asphalt, is also constant.
Did Adrian Newey find the ideal solution? There are those who today suggest a simulation of active suspensions. Just like a couple of years ago there was talk of a simulation of the rear steering wheels for Mercedes.
The Red Bull men who entered the Reparto Corse over the winter never spoke of “tricks” made in Milton Keynes, but of the constant development of each component of the car which led to extraordinary results, because the RB19 shows no weaknesses. Maybe just a small issue with the axle shaft that broke in qualifying in the rear of Max Verstappen’s car.
Red Bull expresses a potential that no one manages to approach: the Aston Martin, the first pursuer, is one second a lap behind. This represents a huge gap for modern Formula 1, especially if you consider that in qualifying the top ten was within a second of poleman Sergio Perez, while second place Charles Leclerc, regardless of the penalty the Monegasque had to take for replacing the control unit which dropped him to 12th place, was 155 thousandths from the Mexican.
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A lap is not worth a race, but Fred Vasseur is right when he claims that a car cannot be competitive on Saturday and become a “drum” on Sunday. In Maranello they decided to insist on the development of the SF-23. Two GPs gone wrong are not enough to throw everything away and devote yourself to next year’s Ferrari car which, instead, will become a… single-seater more compliant with the concepts of Milton Keynes.
The sidepods with the excavation, therefore, will give way to the sides that seek the Coanda effect to bring the high-pressure flow that is on the upper part of the chassis, down to the floor, but in the meantime it is necessary to find the right updates for the SF-23 which was slower than its predecessor.
It should be remembered that the Scuderia was the team most willing to collaborate with Pirelli for the development of the new front tires and the Maranello team, thanks to the feedback gathered from the racing drivers, should have drawn useful indications for the orientation of the 2023 project and for the definition of the tyre model to be introduced in the simulation systems, with respect to the simple analysis of the numbers that all the teams have obviously received.
Pirelli has strengthened the structure of the front tires to reduce the chronic understeer of the 2022 single-seaters, many of which were overweight and, therefore, accentuated the phenomenon: Ferrari, therefore, should have benefited from the modification and it did not seem so.
If Red Bull remains very fast on the asphalt, Ferrari becomes a “grasshopper” which suffers sudden losses of load that make it an unstable car, especially in fast corners. Aerodynamic bouncing leads to tire spin which, even on a track with very low degradation like Jeddah, causes a significant loss of performance. In Maranello they are convinced that the SF-23 car can still be the second force on the grid, considering the RB19 out of reach, but the car has gone beyond the parameters necessary to guarantee the best performance.
Just lose a couple of millimeters of height and the behavior of the car changes drastically, going out of the ideal operating window of the tyres. Some changes worked, some didn’t (the finally updated floor was not used…).
The Maranello environment is disappointed, but not depressed: within GeS there is the desire to demonstrate that the value of Ferrari is not the one shown in Bahrain and Jeddah. Next week there is the Australian Grand Prix, but then thanks to the cancellation of the Chinese GP, Formula 1 have a three-week break: the Scuderia will therefore have a great opportunity to find a solution to its problems…
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