Ferrari confident Sakhir race will be a “completely different story” to F1 test. Fred Vasseur previews the first race.

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur is confident that the first round of the 2023 Formula 1 championship, which takes place next weekend at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir will be “a completely different story” as compared to what we say last week during the three days of winter pre-season testing.

The testing session, which was also held at the Sakhir circuit, showed that Red Bull and Max Verstappen continued where they left off at the end of the previous season, with a dominant display.

 Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez set the fastest laps on two of the three days, while  Ferrari seemed to be a comfortable second-best ahead of Mercedes but for now unable to challenge Red Bull in terms of race pace.

However, Frederic Vasseur, who started his work in Maranello two months ago, feels the first round of the upcoming season will prove to be completely different to testing.

The pre-season testing session in Sakhir ran during the morning and afternoon and into the night, as the Maranello team’s best lap times were set in 55 degree Celsius temperature.

Yet the two most important sessions for the Bahrain GP weekend take place at  18:00 local time, at night when temperatures are cooler after sundown.

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Frederic Vasseur is confident this situation could make a significant difference this weekend, and highlighted the fact that pre-season testing remains just a test.

“What you have to keep in mind is that the race will be a completely different story with what we did this weekend,” the French manager explained, ahead of the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.

“When Charles did the lap time this [test day three] morning, it was 55 degrees of track temp. We have the race at six or seven, and also qualifying means that it is a completely different story. We have to take the test as a test and not as the first FP1 of the race in Bahrain. I think for this we did a good job to scan very large items on the car, focused on the long stints and did good improvements to the car.” – the Ferrari team principal concluded.