If Ferrari were disappointment with the outcome of their first two races of the season, the Australian Grand Prix proved matters could get worse.
On the face of it the team endured a dire weekend, beginning on Saturday when they fell further behind Red Bull in terms of one-lap pace and were out-qualified by rivals Mercedes and Aston Martin. The team left Melbourne point-less after a race bookended by frustrations.
Charles Leclerc suffered a race-ending first-lap tangle with Lance Stroll. On the final lap a five-second time penalty – which the team is now seeking to overturn – dropped Carlos Sainz Jnr from fourth at the line to 12th.
However team principal Frederic Vasseur says it has taken some encouragement about the performance of its SF-75 from its otherwise grim weekend. “I think the issue in Melbourne was not the potential of the car, it was more that the job that we did as a team to extract the best from this,” he told media including RaceFans yesterday.
Ferrari’s change in direction for Melbourne
Over the first two races of 2023 Ferrari offered the closest challenge to Red Bull in terms of qualifying pace but tended to fade in the races as the SF-75 couldn’t make its tyres last as well as the competition. They have been aware of this limitation since pre-season testing, and in Bahrain Leclerc even sacrificed his final run in qualifying to give himself the benefit of a fresh set of tyres at the start of the race.
In Australia the team altered the set-up of its cars in a bid to extract more performance over a race distance. Vasseur said the team could see the changes had the desired effect, but other reasons meant the team didn’t deliver the result it was capable of.
“We took the direction a bit different in terms of development for Australia and I think it paid off,” he said.
“The feeling was strange after Melbourne because we were very frustrated that quali, I think we were not far away to do a good job and for different reasons we didn’t deliver.”
The team was down to one car by the end of lap one on Sunday. Sainz’s strategy was compromised when the race was red-flagged after a Safety Car period in which he had made a pit stop. But having fallen to 11th place by the restart, Sainz was in the top five within 10 laps.
“In the race, the pace was okay,” said Vasseur. “We were a bit unlucky on the Safety Car and red flag and we had to do an extra pit stop. But after this…
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