In the last round of the 2023 Formula One season, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Scuderia Ferrari once again showed a different behavior between qualifying and the start of the race with a full tank in slow corners that has been clear since the introduction of the ‘porpoising’ technical directive TD39 last year. T
The Maranello team plans to solve this issue with upcoming updates in the next few races.
In the Azerbaijan GP, Scuderia Ferrari showed signs of improvement after a poor start to the 2023 Formula 1 championship, thanks to Charles Leclerc’s two pole positions and podiums in Saturday’s Sprint race and Sunday’s main event. The positive aspect was the improvement of the SF-23 without updates, a sign that Maranello has found its way after many departures and a bad start to the 2023 F1 campaign. Charles Leclerc and Ferrari had a race marked by two aspects: a defensive race in the first part, with a six-tenths slower pace than the Red Bulls, on the same pace as Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen from lap 38 onwards.
In particular, the Ferrari car once again behaved differently in the early laps, in the part of the track where Charles Leclerc made the difference on a single lap, as has been noticed starting from the the 2022 Spa Francorchamps race and onwards.
Instead, once again at the start of the race, the situation between Ferrari and Red Bull was reversed, with an RB19 faster than the SF-23 in the middle sector, as we can see in the graph based on the da from the third lap of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Charles Leclerc in photocopy of the first two laps, after a good first sector, saw Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez approach in sector 2 and set better intermediates in that part of the track throughout the first stint.
Show your support for Scuderia Ferrari with official merchandise collection! Click here to enter the F1 online Store and shop securely! And also get your F1 tickets for every race with VIP hospitality and unparalleled insider access. Click here for the best offers to support Charles and Carlos from the track!
This problem is closely related to tire management, and Ferrari began to suffer from it since the Belgium GP 2022, when technical directive 39 was introduced. Indeed, since then, the F1-75 has lost the balance of the single-seater, having to lift the car, and has also started to work poorly on the tires. With the SF-23, the Maranello team has not solved the problem and continues to suffer with a full tank in the slow section of the track, with a lower cornering speed in the first stint of about 5/6 kilometers per hour.
This is the goal that Ferrari aims to achieve by introducing the next updates: to be fast on more challenging tracks for tire management, with the SF-23 performing strong throughout an entire Grand Prix. Scuderia Ferrari is aware that, despite the positive responses given by the modifications made for Baku, the different behavior with a full and empty tank is one of the main problems of the SF-23 car.
The updates coming to Miami, Imola, and Barcelona will also be important also in view of the 2024 season to understand if, like Aston Martin did this year and as rumors suggest Mercedes will do with the W14 B, the team will have to follow Red Bull’s philosophy.
Leave a Reply