Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc acknowledges that the SF-23’s primary weakness lies in handling wind conditions, a challenge they face on the entire Formula 1 grid but is even more difficult for the Maranello team as compared to its main rivals.
Despite implementing upgrades to the SF-23 car, Ferrari has struggled to mitigate its sensitivity to wind, impacting both high-speed performance and contributing to disappointing results like the ninth and 10th place at Silverstone in the British Grand Prix two weeks ago, where wind often plays a significant role due to the circuit’s former RAF airfield location.
While the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix is expected to be more favorable for the Ferrari SF-23 package, Charles Leclerc emphasizes that further efforts are required to address and rectify the wind-related concerns and extract more performance from the 2023 Formula 1 car, also in view of next year’s project, when the Italian side hopes to recover the gap to Red Bull and challenge for race wins, as was the case in the first part of the previous championship.
“It is going in the right direction, then, as we’ve seen in the last race at Silverstone, whenever the wind really picks up (as it did on Sunday), then we’ve got one of our main weaknesses,” Charles Leclerc said in an interview on Thursday at the Hungaroring ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest – “But we did some steps forward. On paper, [the Hungaroring] fits a little bit more our car, but again, every weekend, there seems to be a surprise by one or another team [in the battle behind Red Bull], so let’s see. We understand where we are going to struggle – and unfortunately, Silverstone was one of those, we knew that it wasn’t going to be a great weekend for us. Saturday went pretty well, considering what we expected, but then Sunday was worse than what we expected, but we know why.” – the Monegasque driver added.
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“Wind conditions is a big thing, and for us, it has a big influence, and is probably bigger than any other car on the grid. We just struggle with consistency in those situations – we did a big step forward at the end of the year as it was quite a bit worse than that [in 2022.] I have no doubt that we will improve, then we need some time in order to the parts and for the engineers to find the best way to tackle the issue. We’ve already seen positive steps of going in that direction – we just need to keep pushing.” – Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc concluded ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.
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