Ferrari desperately looking for solutions. The Italian team has signed this 2023 its worst start to season in 14 yearsbeing fourth in the constructors’ championship with only 26 points, behind Mercedes, Aston Martin and a team Red Bull which already leads him by 97 points. Not even in the catastrophic year 2020 did Ferrari have such a low score after the first three races.
Beyond reliability issues and extensive tire degradation on the SF-23which have cost Ferrari many points, in Maranello they have spent weeks looking for the reason why they are so slow behind Red Bull in qualifying, a facet in which last year they were superior to the Austrian team.
The first three races have been held on three circuits (sakhir, jeddah and Melbourne) very different, although the same pattern has been repeated in all three: Red Bull is uncatchable on the straights. The energy drink team outperforms all their competitors by more than five kilometers per hour in top speed. Those in charge of the development of the SF-23 have detected that the difference occurs, mainly, when Red Bull opens the DRS.
The Italians have already figured out where Red Bull’s advantage lies, although they still don’t understand how they get such a big benefit from something as simple as the rear wing. “They have a mega big DRS effect, bigger than all the others. And we have to understand how they are able to do something like that“, explained Frédéric Vasseur. “They are doing something different, and surely they are doing something better.”
Even so, Vasseur believes that this year Ferrari is closer to Red Bull in top speed than in 2022. “I think the difference was probably greater last year,” says the French director. “The problem is that we expected to make up a bit more, but the difference was bigger last year. Even so, now we still have room for improvement in that area. We’re working on it.”
In the classification of Australian Grand Prix, max verstappen and ‘Checo’ Perez led the top speed table with 328.8 and 326.7 km/h respectively, five more than the mark of Carlos Sainz and charles leclerc. The slowest team on the straight was alfa romeoalso powered by Ferrari, with just 319 km/h.
In it Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the next round of the championship, a great advantage is expected for Red Bull, since the 2.2-kilometre straight of the Baku Street Circuit will enhance the top speed of the RB19.
