Ferrari came home from Melbourne with zero points. The errors of the drivers, both involved in collisions, deprived the Scuderia of a placement that the Maranello team car would have deserved. The question everyone is asking is simple: how much is the SF-23 car actually worth?
The numbers are ruthless and point to the fact that it is currently the fourth fastest car on track, behind the elusive Red Bull, but also behind Mercedes and Aston Martin. The general image from the Australian GP offers a clear view, but in Tuesday’s afternoon’s debriefing, the picture that emerged in the Ferrari Racing Division is different, as Ferrari is less pessimistic and more confident about the future.
Critics will immediately say that the typical attitude of Maranello emerges according to which they will always do better in the next race and it is never the time to collect the results while on the track, taking on responsibilities that could lead to bad impressions, perhaps putting their role at risk.
The technical focus in Melbourne was to understand if, after grinding thousands of data following the first two disastrous races, the Prancing Horse technicians had found the key to starting development work on the SF-23 car. There was the need to find out if on the track the SF-23 expressed a behavior similar to that of the car evaluated in the wind tunnel and in the simulator.
And from that point of view Australia offered a positive outcome, a sign that Ferrari has rediscovered the correlation between the simulation systems and the on-track car. Usually, when the data doesn’t add up, it’s not easy to find what causes the numbers to differ. In Maranello, on the other hand, they must have realized that they had done something wrong in the defining of the mathematical model of the 2023 tires which led the SF-23 to behave differently from what was thought of at home.
Apart from the design weaknesses in comparison with the Red Bull RB19, there was something that made the behavior of the SF-23 unstable and that generated tire degradation much earlier than the competition. In the race at the Albert Park circuit, on the other hand, we saw a Ferrari that didn’t show the usual performance “collapse” with the hard compound in the race, remaining close to Mercedes and Aston Martin.
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Of course, the doubt remains whether it is true glory or whether the improvement is only the result of a race run in slow motion to avoid a second pit stop with the white tires: everyone adjusted their race pace to avoid another stop and therefore there is no clear proof that Carlos Sainz, the only Ferrari driver remaining in the race, could have kept the pace of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.
Enrico Cardile‘s technicians believe that what we saw in Melbourne is a bit of a mix of the two, but the SF-23 certainly showed a trend reversal, using a setup that had been brought from home, without distorting ride heights, suspension stiffness or rejecting aerodynamic solutions such as the floor not used in Jeddah which was mounted on the two cars in Australia.
The SF-23 seemed less extreme, but more profitable: to have a greater footprint of the tires, the camber angle was reduced. The more it is pushed, the more the wheel is inclined in a straight line, with a contact surface that is smaller and, therefore, can produce less friction, but can generate overheating in that specific part of the tread that is subjected to greater stress.
Having corrected the tire model in the tunnel must have made it possible to understand that the tires must not be stressed with setups aimed at pure performance, but at the best race management.
If on a technical level it seems that a point has been made, the same cannot be said for the sporting aspect. Ferrari had the potential to put a car on the front row, but they squandered that opportunity. The Maranello team’s attention is so focused on curing the SF-23’s issues that it doesn’t prepare for the flying lap like everyone else does.
To save a train of softs, both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz gave up on the last run with the SF-23 in FP3, which was essential to prepare for the afternoon’s qualifying. The drivers are not terminals of the car, they are human beings who have the right to find the best feeling to give everything in one flying lap. But if you deny him this opportunity, the driver’s confidence in his own ability and in the team’s credibility is lost.
Fred Vasseur has taken over the management of the drivers: the mess that was seen in Q3 between Charles and Sainz was the result of poor communications from the pit wall, almost as if the figure capable of taking responsibility is missing. The French team principal must take note of this and must do everything possible to clarify the chain of command, without debasing the potential of the drivers.
A frustrated Charles Leclerc is of no use to Ferrari: the Monegasque must be put in a position to always express his best. This was not the case in Australia and the effect we saw on Sunday was the excess of competitiveness at the start of the race which sent him into the gravel already on the first lap at turn 3. Without necessarily defining hierarchies, it is up to Fred Vasseur protect Charles in this delicate moment. The Scuderia must turn the corner together, otherwise every effort, however great, will be in vain…
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