Bad start
The 2023 Formula 1 championship could not have started worse. Yes, Carlos Sainz’s fourth place saved at least partially – in terms of points – the Maranello team’s Sunday, but Charles Leclerc’s retirement while he was on his way to a podium finish at the Bahrain International Circuit, combined with the clear difficulty of the SF-23 car in getting close to the Red Bull race pace represent a huge problem for the Maranello team.
To make things even worse, the performance of Aston Martin, in particular with Fernando Alonso, suggests that Scuderia Ferrari will have a difficult task even in replicating the role – consolidated last year – of the second fastest car on the grid. After the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix, for new Ferrari team principal principal Frederic Vasseur it was time to face the first difficult moment in front of the media, as had to explain the disappointing start of the 2023 Formula 1 season, after some encouraging comments heared from Maranello team members in the last few days.
Shock retirement
“It was certainly a difficult race and I have a clear picture of the situation – the former Sauber boss underlined in front of the Sky Sport F1 microphones, as the French manager would certainly have liked to make his debut in the role of Ferrari team principal in a different way – “We are close in qualifying and the pace was decent, but today’s result is absolutely not a good one. With Charles we weren’t able to finish in third place as would have been possible, we had a reliability problem which is absolutely not good and we need to fix it. Tire degradation compared to Red Bull was also poor. We have to start from here to do our best and improve the situation in the coming weeks.” – Frederic Vasseur explained.
The Ferrari mechanics had replaced the battery and ECU on Charles Leclerc’s car before the 2023 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix race. An alarm bell? Perhaps. What is certain, however, is that no one, least of all Frederic Vasseur, expected that reliability could still be a problem, after the many troubles suffered from this point of view in the previous campaign.
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Reliability and degradation
“I didn’t think reliability could be a problem – the French manager candidly acknowledged – we didn’t expect it and it happened to us for the first time. We need to figure out exactly what happened before drawing any conclusions, but it’s a shock.” – the Ferrari boss added.
Frederic Vasseur then shared his thoughts on the race strategy set up with his two drivers. In fact, the idea of using the same compounds also used by Red Bull did not bring the desired benefits: “The degradation was still higher than in Red Bull, even with the red tyres. Putting two sets of soft was too optimistic on our part – acknowledged the Ferrari team principal – only Red Bull could afford it. Now we need to understand the issues with both reliability and with degradation. Degradation is always extreme in Bahrain, this circuit is the most critical of the season and a track where it is very easy to pass with he DRS. Now we will go to Jeddah in better conditions, because we have understood the overall situation” – Frederic Vasseur concluded at the end of the first round of the season.
