In 2023, the Ferrari team is still disappointing its fans, and that’s putting it mildly. At all stages of the season, the pattern repeats itself: on Saturday, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz perform relatively well, and the cars allow them to fight for fairly high positions. But on Sunday the car becomes unrecognizable and as a result the team only has one podium after the first seven stages of the season: in Baku, Leclerc finished third.
At the same time, the SF-23 car has a fairly decent speed potential, but it is impossible to reveal it during the race. Racers cannot trust the car, its behavior constantly changing over the course of the race, and not just in different segments of the Grand Prix or from circle to circle, but even from corner to corner.
“You never know how it will behave, whether it will understeer or oversteer,” Charles summarized impressions of the car at this stage of the season.
Before the race in Barcelona, Ferrari noticeably modernized the SF-23, the bottom and the shape of the side pontoons have changed, but it cannot be said that the car’s behavior has improved significantly. Sainz started from second position but finished fifth: if the first and third segments of the distance were more or less normal, then the Spaniard struggled in the second and could not hold back the attacks of the Mercedes drivers and Sergio Perez .
There is no need to talk about his partner at all: he started from the pit lane after his car was unable to reach normal speed during qualifying, and the team had to completely replace the entire rear. Then, in the first segment of Sunday’s race, the behavior of the car left much to be desired, it returned to normal in the second, and in the third it was already quite good. But Leclerc only finished 11th.
The team has yet to figure out why.
“Our biggest problem remains the instability, which we cannot explain,” admits Frederic Vasseur, head of the Italian team. As the German publication Auto Motor und Sport writes, citing sources in the Scuderia, aerodynamicists are blaming colleagues who developed the suspension for the problems, shifting responsibility to the aerodynamics department. Such an approach is difficult to call constructive.
At the same time, the results of research in a wind tunnel indicate that the SF-23 chassis is quite efficient. This is partly confirmed by the qualifying results, but they are largely achieved thanks to the fact that the cars are fitted with fresh sets of soft rubber, which ensures high-quality grip on the track in one fast lap. And this compensates for the various shortcomings of the car, which are fully manifested on Sunday.
Firstly, Ferrari cars are in traffic within race distance, the weather conditions are no longer the same as the day before and there are more than ten times more fuel in the tanks than in qualifying. At the same time, the power plants operate in a more moderate mode. All of these factors certainly play a role. But when other top teams usually get the situation under control, unpredictable problems begin at the Scuderia.
For example, when cornering, the SF-23 loses more downforce than its direct rivals’ cars, and is also more prone to destabilization on uneven roads. It also reacts more strongly to the influence of the wind.
“If the wind direction changes two or three degrees, the balance changes completely,” Leclerc complains.
And, of course, the riders fail to achieve the normal and stable operation of the rubber, and this does not depend on the track. It was the same in Monaco and Barcelona.
“Finding answers to questions is extremely difficult because we cannot establish a pattern to solve this conundrum. As a result, we do not focus on solving a specific problem. The car behaves differently, although I know I’m doing the same, and that’s the biggest secret for me,” says an upset Charles.
The recently presented novelties have not yet helped to get closer to the solution, and it is possible that the problems are related to some kind of inherent design flaws. Of course, Maranello will continue to look for the reasons for what is happening, but even if they can pinpoint them, the rivals will already be way ahead and they will finally have to say goodbye to dreams of getting good results this year.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
