Ferrari unveiled its new single-seater in its Italian stronghold of Maranello on Tuesday, with the ambition to rise to the level of Red Bull after a 2022 season marked by costly mistakes in race strategy and reliability problems.
The Scuderia, which has not won in F1 since the Austrian Grand Prix on July 10, finished second in the constructors’ championship behind the team of double reigning world champion Max Verstappen.
For the most titled crest in history, the shortage seems endless: the last world title dates back to 2007 for the drivers (Kimi Räikkönen) and 2008 for the constructors.
“The most important thing for us is to put Ferrari in front”, launched Tuesday at the historic headquarters of Maranello, in Emilia-Romagna (center), the new boss of Ferrari in F1, the Frenchman Frédéric Vasseur, who arrived from Alfa Romeo after the departure of Mattia Binotto in November.
In its traditional red livery adorned with black facings, the single-seater version 2023 – called SF-23 – will have to show greater reliability than during the last season, weighed down by numerous retirements.
“The objective is to win, clearly”, underlined the Monegasque Charles Leclerc, vice-world champion and holder again this year of one of the two steering wheels of the mark with the prancing horse, alongside the Spaniard Carlos Sainz.
Ferrari does not favor either driver. It was therefore thanks to a postponed toss against Sainz that Leclerc slipped into the car’s seat on Tuesday first to do a few laps of the circuit with his feet to the floor in front of 500 “tifosi”.
“Do the best job possible”
Not enough to cool Leclerc, de facto on the front line last year, he whose contract with Ferrari expires in 2024.
“It is important for Carlos and me to be fully motivated, to do the best possible job during the first part of the season”, assures the Monegasque who says he shares with the Spaniard, outside the paddock, the passion for padel and failures. “Then, if at some point in the championship a driver is clearly in the battle to win the title, I am sure that the team will do everything to put him in the best conditions”.
“In golf I win, in padel I win, in chess it’s very close,” joked Carlos Sainz at a press conference. “I practiced racquet sports a lot. But he is exceptional in music, unlike me.
On a purely sporting level, he said he was “confident” less than three weeks before the first Grand Prix in Bahrain (March 5). “I worked hard this winter to prepare. Last year I had my share of success but it was not an easy season […]I know that I can do very good things”.
Reliability objective
During these traditional pre-season presentations, the teams more or less play the game by revealing their developments found during the winter.
Red Bull was content to show the livery of its RB19 at the beginning of February – not being the definitive model that Verstappen will drive at the pre-season tests in Bahrain (February 23-25).
For its part, if Ferrari took its car out of the garage in front of the press, it did not detail the developments made during the winter. We can however note that the nose of the single-seater has been shortened and the front wing redesigned compared to the F1-75 of last season.
On the engine side, “last year, it’s no secret, [il] was not the best asset [de la voiture]. We did a good job and we are ready,” assured Frédéric Vasseur.
“The concept of the car is the same, the regulations are the same […]. Only Bahrain will tell us where we are in terms of reliability and performance,” he added. With only a few days between practice and the GP, “it will be difficult to react in the event of a problem” with the car.
After Mercedes on Wednesday, the French Alpine will be the last team to unveil its car for the season. She will lift the veil on Thursday on the A523, her 2023 single-seater which has already completed its first laps on Monday, during a run with Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly at the wheel.