A matter of concepts
In the end, the 2023 Formula 1 season seems to be revolving around a new magic word: concept. There’s Mercedes’ concept, without the sidepods, which the Brackley team seems ready to abandon definitively from the next round of the championship, scheduled to take place at Imola, and then there’s Ferrari’s concept, with rather large and scooped sidepods.
The Maranello team had so far given up on conforming to the technical philosophy launched by Red Bull in 2022 and adopted by almost all the competitors this year, but perhaps the moment of technical revolution is near. Carlos Sainz revealed this in an interview with Sky Sport F1 Italy after finishing fifth in the Miami Grand Prix, another Sunday in which the SF-23 car was far behind Red Bull in terms of race pace.
Catalan revolution
Talking about the next updates, which Ferrari plans to bring to Imola and then, precisely, to the Circuit de Catalunya in view of the Spanish Grand Prix, the former McLaren driver admitted the possibility of undertaking a drastic change of “direction”, also thinking about the 2024 Formula One season: “From here to Barcelona we will still try some setup things – explained the Ferrari driver – in Imola, other updates will arrive that should help us. In Barcelona, we will try to change the car a bit and go in another direction, to see if this can help us in the race pace. Today it’s clear that we’re not in a bad position in qualifying, but then in the race we have little flexibility and unpredictability of the car. With this wind, you can’t push, because you the tires are immediately done.” – the Spaniard explained at the end of the Miami Grand Prix.
Error without consequences
Looking at his Sunday overall, Carlos Sainz started with an error at the entrance to the pit lane. A distraction that cost him a five second penalty which, fortunately, did not lead him to lose any more positions as had happened a few weeks ago in Melbourne: “The lock-up in the pit lane was all my fault – he acknowledged – it was a mistake, I was pushing to undercut Fernando and I didn’t evaluate that braking point well, but in the end, it didn’t cost us anything. The final position wouldn’t have changed.” – he pointed out.
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Mediums ok, hards a nightmare
On the other hand, what haunted Carlos Sainz this Sunday was the difference in performance between the tires: “What is clear is that we did a very good stint with the medium – for the first time we were faster than the Aston Martin in the race and with the degradation – but then we have to understand why after just three or four laps of overtaking slower cars with the hard tire, the stint becomes difficult, inconsistent, and slow. It can’t be that we fight for pole on Saturday and for the podium with the medium and then struggle so much with the hard. We are in a position where we have to try many things, we don’t understand why we struggle so much in the race”, he concluded.
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