Wasn’t there something in Ferrari it seemed? While their pit wall has been criticized, according to Carlos Sainz, there has been a fundamental problem that has cropped up this year in the background, which, like Mercedes, has carried over into 2023. And have they been blinded by deceptive success?
The Formula 1 field returns to Austria this weekend. Last year, Ferrari celebrated its Grand Prix weekend there, which was actually held in sprints. And the fact that it wasn’t a double victory was only because Carlos Sainz’s engine caught fire at the start.
When Charles Leclerc climbed to the highest rung of the podium in 2022, he and Ferrari could not have imagined that even if they returned to the same place a year later, that time would count as their last race victory. Moreover, Leclerc still seriously believes that this success could be the beginning of championship translation, and that he can still work on his 38-point deficit against Max Verstappen.
We now know that Ferrari not only fell spectacularly in the second half of the year, but that its ups and downs stretched into 2023 and only got worse. Since then, their team has been looking for a way to get back to winning ways, while this year’s car is struggling with similar problems as in the second half of last season.
Although more attention was paid to Ferrari’s credibility and strategic problems at the time, as they lost many points on these too, according to Carlos Sainz, in fact, the same problems they still had appeared in front of them almost a year ago. Poor racing speed, poor tire management. “If we analyze the bigger picture, it was already clear in the second half of last year that we could fight for pole positions with our cars, but we always beat Red Bull in the race.”
“A lot of times people blamed our strategy, but in fact a lot of times we weren’t that fast in the race. Like for example in Budapest, Austin or other places where we got a pole and then fell back.”
“Maybe the only difference was that we were one-tenths down and then in the race we were twenty or three tenths behind. This year we’re half a second behind in qualifying, and eight-tenths behind in the race, so it’s just that the differences are getting bigger.” Sainz drove.
Charles Leclerc outsprinted Max Verstappen three times to win last year’s Austrian Grand Prix (Photo: XPB)They walked into a trap that caught Mercedes from the other direction
While last year it seemed that Ferrari, who had been fighting for victories and the championship title in the first half of the year, was in a completely different position than Mercedes, which surrounded itself with its car, this year it turned out that the two giants were in fact in the same trap against Red Bull because of the rules. After its introduction, they only got into it from different directions at most.
The common point is that they both continued with their aerodynamic concept, which is very different from Red Bull’s, even for the 2023 season, but at the start of the year, seeing the bulls outperform, they had to face the fact that they might have been on the wrong track. Only in recent weeks have they gone in a different direction, which is evidenced by the amazing renewal of their cars.
While Mercedes publicly accepted at the start of the year that their improvement at the end of 2022, George Russell’s win at Interlagos, made them believe there was more potential in their philosophy than they were able to get out of it for 2023, according to Sainz Ferrari is likely to make a strong start to the season. At the beginning of last year misled.
We can recall that after three races Leclerc was still leading the championship by a large margin, and many had given him the title even then. However, Red Bull completed the first half of the year with an extremely overdriven car, which did not show the true potential of its concept. They only managed to exploit it from the second semester, but mostly from 2023, and the result is an overwhelming dominance.
The engine failures were striking, but the biggest problem was another (Photo: XPB)Sainz noted that when they laid the foundations for this year’s Ferrari, their team still believed they were on the right track in the new rules. “It’s very interesting because if you look at last year, when the current car was born, we were still very competitive at that time.”
“We didn’t know how the second half of the year was going to turn out, we didn’t know this car was going to struggle so much in the races. Then we were fast in the races, we were fast in the time trials, in the first six or seven races of the season. And maybe that’s why this car was born with this.” way”
explained the Ferrari driver.
“Because you stick to the concept car after six or seven races, maybe those first strong six races gave us confidence in that concept and this car. Maybe if the second half of the season had started earlier, maybe the first half of this year would have been a little easier. There Two ways of looking at it.”
Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton (Photo: EPA/Seo Wu)According to Sainz, this could be a lesson not only from Ferrari’s point of view, but also from the point of view of those who criticize their team. “F1 is very complex, it’s hard to understand. It’s very easy to get criticized as an outsider. We have to swallow this, we have to respond, we have to make sure the right steps are taken and we have to keep working as a team” said the MotorsportsThere is a Spanish pronunciation.
Just like Mercedes, which is based in Canada, Ferrari is only now beginning to bounce back after being slapped in the face after last year’s misguided successes. The Austrian track may be more suitable for their car this year too, and if they don’t make mistakes on other levels this time, they can prove that they are starting to close in on Red Bull, who were beaten in the same place last year by small steps.
