The 2023 Formula One season has gotten off to a disastrous start for Ferrari. They’re a million miles off the pace of the grid-leading Red Bulls, with both Aston Martin and Mercedes seemingly quicker than the Scuderia as well. As such, F1 betting odds provided by online bookmakers make the Maranello outfit rank outsiders for success this season, a stark contrast to last term where, for half a season at least, Ferrari was a genuine title contender.
Who can forget the start of last season? The sun was finally shining on Italy’s finest motorsport team for the first time in what feels like an eternity. A one-two finish in Bahrain was followed up with a Charles Leclerc victory in Australia just a matter of weeks later, and the Monegasque driver had pulled out a 50-point lead on reigning world champion Max Verstappen after just three races. That was as good as it would get, however.
As we all remember, a combination of awful decisions from the pit wall combined with reliability issues meant that the season was all but over at the halfway point. But at least there was one race at the midway point of the campaign where Leclerc got his just desserts, and that remains Ferrari’s last victory until this day.
Leclerc Outclasses Verstappen in Austria
Since 2018, Max Verstappen had pretty much held the Austrian Grand Prix hostage. Between then and 2021, the Flying Dutchman had won three of four races and he was the man to beat. Spurred on by a legion of Dutch fans that made their way down through central Europe to support their man, Super Max was seemingly unstoppable at Red Bull Ring. That was until Charles Leclerc made his adversary seem human for the first time in a long time last July.
One week on from yet another difficult weekend for the Monegasque man, where he was robbed of victory by his own team at Silverstone, he was out to prove that he was the best driver on the grid. Super Max started on pole, but that wasn’t enough to slow down the charging Leclerc. Ferrari’s main man overtook Verstappen not once, not twice, but three times, asserting his dominance over the Netherlands star, for one weekend at least.
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