Scuderia Ferrari will introduce its first upgrades to the SF-23 challenger in this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which is scheduled to take place at the Jeddah Corniche circuit, as confirmed by Team Principal Frederic Vasseur, who faced the media yesterday to try and explain the moment is going through, following a difficult start to the 2023 Formula 1 season and rumours of a mass exodus from Maranello.
The French manager wanted to focus on Ferrari’s attempts to reduce the deficit to rivals Red Bull. The Maranello team heads to Saudi Arabia for the second round of the season confident it can take advantage of its high straight-line speed which was seen especially in the qualifying session for the Bahrain Grand Prix, as the SF-23 challenger proved to be faster on the straights than the RB19, despite the fact that the Red Bull car gained a lot more lap time in the slow and medium corners.
While Charles Leclerc’s race at the Sakhir circuit was affected by a power unit issue which forced him to retire, Carlos Sainz ended the Bahrain Grand Prix in fourth place, suffering from high tyre degradation in the final stages of the Grand Prix, which did not allow him to get nowhere near close to challenging the Red Bull a car, an issue which the SF-23 seems to have carried over from last season’s F1-75.
However, the Jeddah Corniche Circuit is a race track that places a lot of emphasis on straight-line speed and as a result the French manager is confident we will see a “different story” this weekend, hoping that the track characteristics will suit the SF-23 car far better than in Bahrain:
“The characteristic of Jeddah is completely different compared to the previous one in Bahrain, in terms of grip and the layout of the track, [which mean] it’s a completely different story,” he explained, ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix – “Probably it will swing a little bit more to what we have today. We’ll also bring some some updates in Jeddah and I hope that we do step forward.”
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Yet it’s going to be a difficult weekend for the Maranello team, with Charles Leclerc who will most likely not be able to challenge for a podium in normal race conditions: the Monegasque is set to receive a ten-place grid penalty as a result of the technical failures suffered in the first round of the season.
Several key members of the design team have also left the Maranello team following a poor start to the new championship, but Fred Vasseur still has confidence in the car concept and feels there is “mega room” for improvements.
“For me it’s a problem of performance, it’s not a problem of concept. Now we have the car that we have and we struggled a bit with the balance over the weekend. It means that we have mega room for improvements on this path with our car and our package. I don’t want to speak about updates or new parts, but with Bahrain I think we had a lot of room for improvements in terms of drivability.” – he continued.
Fred Vasseur highlight that the ‘drivability’ remarks part of his comments are linked to making the single-seater easier to drive for both Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, as opposed to it referring to their power unit package. The French manager explained that the Italian side has to fully understand how the car performs on more than one race circuit, before making any decisions regarding the car concept.
“The most important is to stay focused on the current situation to try to get the best from what we have today. Even if we are bringing updates and we will improve the situation and the competitiveness of the package. But keep in mind that Bahrain is not always representative. We are still at the early stage of the car, we only did three days of testing on one track and we need to have a better understanding of the of the car itself to try to get the best from the package.” – he concluded.
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