Ups and Downs
This Ferrari is riding a rollercoaster in Formula 1, where behind the usual Max Verstappen, the order keeps getting shuffled every Sunday, causing those teams that performed well the previous week to plummet and bringing new protagonists to the forefront. At Silverstone, it was McLaren’s turn, as they have made significant progress in the last two races thanks to new upgrades.
While Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri enjoy second and fourth place – which could have been a double podium without the entry of the Safety Car – in Maranello, they need to lick their wounds. In Austria, the SF-23 provided the best answers of the 2023 Formula One season, but in Great Britain, the worst results arrived.
Behind Williams
Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz crossed the finish line in ninth and tenth positions, at the end of a Grand Prix where nothing worked. Besides Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, and Aston Martin, the two Ferrari cars were also beaten by an exceptional Alex Albon in the Williams. In England, Ferrari was the sixth force on the track. It was an unexpected collapse that did not go unnoticed in the Italian press.
“Ferrari couldn’t win the Silverstone Grand Prix,” writes Stefano Mancini in La Stampa, “but they shouldn’t have lost it in this way either. Wrong strategies, excessive caution, misreading of the race, drivers complaining: Charles Leclerc’s ninth place and Carlos Sainz’s tenth send us back to the darkest moments of the early season when tire consumption in the race weighed down any ambition for results. The paradox is that yesterday […] the SF-23’s tires didn’t degrade. The drivers could have pushed harder and, above all, they could have used softer compounds (the softs remained unexplainably in the pits) […]”.
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Hunt for the Constructors’ Podium
This result also complicates the pursuit in the Constructors’ Championship: third place is 24 points away, while second place – occupied by Mercedes – is a significant 46 points ahead. “Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri painted Silverstone Sunday in orange,” notes Paolo Rossi in La Repubblica, “sending the sea of British fans into ecstasy […]. However, the bubbles of the day eventually burst, and here the painful notes begin. They are the red Ferrari colors that, objectively speaking, experienced another day that will not be remembered with pride. Ninth for Charles Leclerc, tenth for Carlos Sainz, a performance that needs to be quickly erased from collective memory. While structurally the cars were not designed to excel on the British circuit, a couple of human errors also contributed to worsening the situation: one in strategy, Charles Leclerc’s pit stop being too early, and the other a mistake by Carlos Sainz in a corner (running wide), which cost him three positions in no time at all […].” – the Italian media pointed out.
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