Scuderia Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur is the most recent to share his thoughts on Red Bull’s impressive DRS advantage in the start of the 2023 Formula 1 campaign. While the Ferrari boss admitted it’s impact is “mega”, at the same time he pointed out that this gap was even bigger last year.
While Scuderia Ferrari was expected to challenge Red Bull for the 2023 Formula 1 titles, especially after the Maranello team gave up on the second part of the previous championship in order to focus on this season, the Milton Keynes squad came to the track with its RB19 which immediately seemed superior to its opponents from the first day of the pre-season testing session at the Bahrain International Circuit.
Red Bull has then confirmed the impressions in the first three races of the year by taking three pole positions and three race victories, two of those ending with a dominant one-two finish, in Bahrain and at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, which have given them a solid 58-point lead over Aston Martin in the Constructors’ Championship.
Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz has described the 2023 Red Bull car “superior” to the Italian side’s SF-23 single-seater, admitting in a recent interview for the press that the RB19 is “superior in qualy, in race, in straight-line speed. Superior in medium and low speed corners. They’re superior with tyre management, they’re superior over the kerbs. It shows we clearly need to change something, we need to go onto something very different from where we are now.” – the Spaniard pointed out.
On that list of different things which Ferrari need to focus on is also a plan to reduce the DRS gap which is Maranello team currently has, as confirmed by Frederic Vasseur. Despite the fact that the French manager feels Red Bull’s DRS effect was even more potent in 2022, in the current championship its impact is still greater than anyone else’s, which gives the Austrian side a huge benefit: “A mega big DRS effect,” he replied when asked about the rivals’ impressive straight-line speed while using the drag reduction system:
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“Bigger than everyone else and we have to understand how they are able to do something like this. I think it was probably even more huge last year, but we have room for improvement in this area. They are doing something different and they are doing something better for sure. But we are on it.” – he added.
British Formula One pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz has described Red Bull’s DRS as being “super-duper” and confirmed that Ferrari and Mercedes believe it gives the Austrian side an advantage of at least two to three-tenths per lap when it’s deployed, which of course is in addition to the normal speed advantage that the RB19 challenger already has.
And it is clearly not just the Ferrari SF-23 car that the Red Bull RB19 is making look slow. Lewis Hamilton managed to overtake Max Verstappen in the start of the Austrian Grand Prix, but was quickly passed by the Dutchman, who used his impressive straight-line to overtake both Mercedes cars in just a few laps and easily go on to win the race.
The seven-time Formula 1 world champion was asked about the RB19 car following the race at the Albert Park circuit, describing it as “insane” and the “most dominant” car he has ever seen: “His car is so fast, he passed me halfway down the straight and he was several metres ahead, like 10 metres ahead [before the corner], but I don’t know how they’re so quick on the straight.”
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted that Red Bull’s “straight-line speed advantage with the DRS open is just mind-boggling.”
Even Fernando Alonso, who during the first three rounds of the 2023 Formula 1 campaign seemed to have the second fastest car on the track, with three podium finishes in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia, pointed out that he does not feel he can win a race this season, unless Red Bull suffer from technical issues:
“We need some help from them, but it will happen eventually when they cannot finish always first and second,” said the Spaniard. “One day it’s a pit stop, one day it’s a gearbox. There’s going to be some circuits where maybe reliability or whatever could help us and hopefully in those races, we take the opportunity.” – the former Ferrari man concluded.
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