The year 2023 was certainly not one of the best periods for Scuderia Ferrari, especially after the performances witnessed at the beginning of last year and the rekindled hope of fighting for the coveted Formula 1 championship.
However, step by step, there was a clear improvement in the SF-23, especially after the summer break when Carlos Sainz secured two consecutive pole positions and even a victory. Charles Leclerc was no slouch either, showing great consistency in the last races of the season, allowing the Prancing Horse to believe in the second-place finish in the Constructors’ Championship. In the end, however, that position remained in the hands of Mercedes, which, however, seems unable to find a solution to the multiple issues plaguing the W14.
Despite these results, Italian journalist and motorsport expert Alessandro Gargantini has stated that next year, Red Bull will have to watch out for the teams from Maranello and for Mercedes, which have shown significant progress. Ferrari has even managed to break a “curse” that had been with them for years. “In Maranello, they managed to reverse the trend that had often penalized them in recent times, namely struggling in the second part of the championship. Last year, the Prancing Horse earned forty-three percent of its points in the final races of the year, while this year it has earned fifty-three percent, showing that it has understood a significant portion of the problems that emerged at the beginning of the year and has been able to mitigate their effects.” – he pointed out.
“The very worried expression that did not bode well after the full-tank race simulations carried out in the pre-season tests in Bahrain, when Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz realized that Red Bull was on another level, gradually gave way to a more positive and confident atmosphere that gradually took over after the race in Zandvoort, a real turning point from a technical perspective, as from the subsequent Monza race, the drivers of the Prancing Horse began to achieve some notable successes, such as Carlos Sainz’s well-deserved victory in Singapore and Charles Leclerc’s three front rows in the last five races of 2023,” wrote the Italian expert in a recent article for Autosprint.
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“The lowest point of the season was the Australian Grand Prix, where Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz didn’t even score a point. Then there was the reaction, a word repeatedly emphasized by Fred Vasseur in the end-of-year press lunch, on the favorable track of Baku that preceded a moment where it was easy to get lost, but the group managed it very cohesively, finding a way out. Even the fact of being able to keep the ship steady and not lose one’s way in the most difficult moment of the year is an important factor not to be underestimated. The 2023 Formula One season for the Maranello team was a challenging championship, which brought 148 fewer points than the previous year in an equal number of races and the transition from second to third place among Constructors. Looking ahead to the next year, momentum matters more than the score, and from this point of view, it is not wrong to assert that the Ferrari team is now in a better position and closer to Red Bull in practice than twelve months ago,” the journalist concluded.
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