Former Michael Schumacher race engineer feels Ferrari can ‘absolutely’ catch Red Bull in 2024. Luca Baldisserri confidently asserts that Ferrari can catch Red Bull next year.

Italian engineer Luca Baldisserri, best known for being the Chief Track Engineer for Scuderia Ferrari between 2007 and 2015 and a renowned figure in Formula 1 engineering, famously recognized for his role as Michael Schumacher’s race engineer, confidently suggests that the Maranello team might be closely following Red Bull’s pace in the 2024 Formula One championship.

Luca Baldisserri, who experienced the peak of Ferrari during their championship-winning era, challenges the common belief that the Italian side was overshadowed by Red Bull’s recent Formula One dominance. Speaking to the Italian daily newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport, Luca Baldisserri discussed the shifts in Ferrari’s management structure, highlighting Frederic Vasseur’s takeover before the start of the 2023 campaign. He provides a distinctive perspective on evaluating team performance, placing special emphasis on the contributions of the secondary drivers:

“When I analyse a car I always do it by considering the performance of the second driver. And in this sense, it is even clearer that Ferrari’s performance was not that much inferior to that of Sergio Perez’s Red Bull,” the former Ferrari engineer pointed out.

Luca Baldisserri attributes Red Bull’s advantage this season to Max Verstappen‘s extraordinary skills, stating: “The other car was so far ahead because it had an extraterrestrial behind the wheel.” Expressed with a cheerful demeanor, this remark emphasizes his acknowledgment of the Dutchman’s exceptional talent.

Examining the comparison between Scuderia Ferrari and Red Bull, Luca Baldisserri holds a favorable view of the performance of the Maranello team’s SF-23 car: “I would say that in qualifying, Ferrari was very close, if not ahead, of Red Bull,” he explained.

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The former Ferrari engineer also highlighted Carlos Sainz’s victory at the Marina Bay street circuit in Singapore as a clear sign of Ferrari’s competitiveness, adding: “What’s more, (Carlos) Sainz won a race, albeit on an atypical track like Singapore. If we don’t look at things with the eye of a fan who would like to see Ferrari always win, it didn’t go badly.” – he concluded.