Written by Pia Vanessa Müller, Edited by Janvi Unni
After a promising winter-break and a successful car launch, the opening races of the 2023 Formula 1 season have cast doubt on whether the Italian team will be able to compete with Red Bull this season.
Ferrari is known as the sport's most famous team. They can look back on many world championships with various legendary drivers like Michael Schumacher, Niki Lauda and Kimi Räikkönen. However, the Tifosi are now faced with the harsh reality that they haven't had a serious chance at the title for 15 continuous seasons. Though it looked promising at the start of the 2022 season, Ferrari were soon faced with the bleak truth that their car wasn’t as good as they hoped it would be.
There were a few reasons for the decreasing performance of the Ferrari F1-75. On one hand there was the unreliable power unit, and on the other hand there was the poor tire management. But the car wasn’t the only thing that failed the two drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. The team also seemed to struggle with their strategies and communication skills.
One solution to the team’s unsatisfactory performance was the replacement of team principal Mattia Binotto, as he resigned at the end of last season. This made room for Frederic Vasseur as the new team principal.
As far as it seems, the issues of the last season haven’t been resolved, since the Scuderia Ferrari had to take a serious 10-place grid penalty on only the second race of the season, for using more than Leclerc’s two allotted control electronics units for the season.
At this point of the season, Ferrari’s car performance is behind that of Red Bull and Aston Martin, and even Mercedes were ahead of them in Jeddah.
After a devastating result in Australia, the team moved down to fourth place,
with Charles Leclerc only being able to finish one out of three races.
Fred Vasseur retains a positive attitude and claims:
“Today’s (Australian Grand Prix) result, not scoring points, does not reflect the progress we have made as a team.” And we now have three weeks to keep working on optimising and updating the SF-23 for the coming races.”
Ferrari’s performance and potential is way greater than their current points and standing indicates, but in order to be successful in Formula One, you have to score points.