2023 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[LM10]

The discussion so far in the thread was made under the assumption that what the article said was true. I don't necessarily believe it either, but Duchessa / formula1uno report this understeer as unexpected.

And to respond to your point in Charles: Leclerc doesn't seem very happy or confident in the car as he did this time last year. And I doubt he would have supported developing towards an understeering balance with his feedback.

Yup that's what I'm saying. A new FW for race 3 would have months of lead time; it cannot be a fix for any unexpected problem, so if the unexpected problem is true then that fw can't be counted upon.

I agree that Charles doesn't seem as happy as he was last year this time around. I'm not so sure though, if he might have been instructed by Fred to be less talkative given Fred's secrecy when asked any performance questions. Or maybe the car is actually not to Charles' liking yet.

As for the reported unexpected understeer - what Vanja has told in the car thread makes sense. Could be a deformation thing which could have only be seen on track.

[Xyz22]

Article author expanded a bit on Twitter:

Comment from one user:

If the opposing engineer has correctly estimated a potential of more than 10 km/h higher speed at the same load compared to the F1-75, it would mean that they have also hit the mark with the floor and the rear suspension.

Answer by the author:

The important thing is not to have gone too far in the opposite direction, with efficiency but then little balance and performance in the slow and medium speed corners. That was not the goal of the Project 23, so we have to hope they solve what didn't work during testing.

The SF-23 was supposed to be better. However, how it will perform compared to others in the upcoming weekend is really difficult to evaluate, even for the teams themselves. A week of data analysis and simulation can help, but only on the track can you be certain of the goodness of the work done.

So according to this report clearly testing didn't go according to expectations, which was quite obvious from Leclerc reaction.

[JPower]

I'd dare to say that RB would have won '22 if the tables were turnen and they had shown up with the SF1-75 in Barcelona. With heir superior race execution and effevtiveness of in-season updates they can beat a faster team. They've shown in '21 they can. They can be almost half a second behind on pace and still win on execution.

My point; the SF23 is plenty fast to contend. Being a few tenths off pace is not the thing that'll lose them the WC.

The fact that RB is by far the best team in F1 in terms of execution highlights how strong the car needs to be from the start of the season already.
If Ferrari has a slower car there is no hope they can compete for the title.

OK, so you’ve determined the SF-23 already slower than the RB18, that Ferrari can’t develop the car, that Ferrari will fall behind Mercedes after Baku, that Leclerc is unhappy and already hates the car, that Ferrari isn’t as good a team as RB and need a car much faster to compete, etc, etc.

What exactly are you here for if you’ve already predicted the entire season already?

[Xyz22]

I'd dare to say that RB would have won '22 if the tables were turnen and they had shown up with the SF1-75 in Barcelona. With heir superior race execution and effevtiveness of in-season updates they can beat a faster team. They've shown in '21 they can. They can be almost half a second behind on pace and still win on execution.

My point; the SF23 is plenty fast to contend. Being a few tenths off pace is not the thing that'll lose them the WC.

The fact that RB is by far the best team in F1 in terms of execution highlights how strong the car needs to be from the start of the season already.
If Ferrari has a slower car there is no hope they can compete for the title.

OK, so you’ve determined the SF-23 already slower than the RB18, that Ferrari can’t develop the car, that Ferrari will fall behind Mercedes after Baku, that Leclerc is unhappy and already hates the car, that Ferrari isn’t as good a team as RB and need a car much faster to compete, etc, etc.

What exactly are you here for if you’ve already predicted the entire season already?

Discussing (mainly suffering with fellow Ferrari fans lmao). Anyway If you can present me enough evidence, maybe i can go from pessimistic to optimistic

But let's wait for the first race and see what happens at this point.

[JPower]

The fact that RB is by far the best team in F1 in terms of execution highlights how strong the car needs to be from the start of the season already.
If Ferrari has a slower car there is no hope they can compete for the title.

OK, so you’ve determined the SF-23 already slower than the RB18, that Ferrari can’t develop the car, that Ferrari will fall behind Mercedes after Baku, that Leclerc is unhappy and already hates the car, that Ferrari isn’t as good a team as RB and need a car much faster to compete, etc, etc.

What exactly are you here for if you’ve already predicted the entire season already?

Discussing (mainly suffering with fellow Ferrari fans lmao). Anyway If you can present me enough evidence, maybe i can go from pessimistic to optimistic

But let's wait for the first race and see what happens at this point.

There’s no need to change your mind. You’ve already convinced yourself. That’s pretty clear.

[codetower]

Discussing (mainly suffering with fellow Ferrari fans lmao). Anyway If you can present me enough evidence, maybe i can go from pessimistic to optimistic

But let's wait for the first race and see what happens at this point.

Speak for yourself. We all aren't suffering. I actually enjoyed last season as a whole, and am fairly optimistic we will improve this season as well. Win it all? Maybe not, but I am looking forward to the season.

[Vanja #66]

There's more than enough evidence that things are quite good. How good remains to be seen. Merc suffered extremely bad in 2022 and they are not on top of all their problems yet, unlike Ferrari. Yes, there arw some setup issues, but there is loads of room to improve.

RB just kept improving their car and are already at 100%. Ferrari made a few big design changes and it could take a 2-3 races to fully understand the car and extract 100% from it. The biggest thing is ride height, if they can indeed go lower - there's lots of lap time left on the table.

There won't be another bouncing TD this year and with better race execution and reliability there's quite a lot for Tifosi to hope for, no matter how fast the car is at the first race.

[ringo]

It is being said the car is still eating tyres.
Suspension design or aero? who knows.
But maybe we can look on what causes high tyre deg.

[organic]

Low wing for one, suspension setup not yet optimal, balance maybe unpredictable at times as ride height changes

[JPower]

It is being said the car is still eating tyres.
Suspension design or aero? who knows.
But maybe we can look on what causes high tyre deg.

If Ferrari is eating tires, then every other team outside of Aston and Red Bull are also eating tires.

I don't know if it will match Red Bull at Bahrain but I think it might be too early to make a determination if it has deg issues.

[organic]

Seems like a follow up article about the understeer

https://www.formu1a.uno/leclerc-preoccu ... -di-guida/

The Ferrari SF-23 is limited in front
The SF-23 is a very different car from the previous one. The main innovations reside at the front, with completely revised mechanics , and in the non-visible part of the underbody, in addition to the more evident modifications in the front wing and side pods. Innovations that have radically changed the characteristics of the Italian car, now a missile on a straight line but which struggles more than the F1-75 in corners, with more efficiency but with a balance that, especially in slow and medium curves speed , still missing .

The new born in Maranello does not have its weak point in the rear, as it might initially seem, but the problem is to be found at the front. Leaving aside the first day used to collect data on the track, to be compared with those coming from the factory instruments, the second and last day were used to optimize and extract the potential of the SF-23. Despite working a lot in terms of setup, it came out that the new Italian car suffered from understeer on entry and in the middle of the corner, which turned into oversteer on exit. With the current front wing it was not possible to solve the problem, given that"even at maximum clicks, we didn't get rid of the understeer, especially in the hottest hours of the day" a technician from the Italian team let us know.

[Shal_Leg16]

There's more than enough evidence that things are quite good. How good remains to be seen. Merc suffered extremely bad in 2022 and they are not on top of all their problems yet, unlike Ferrari. Yes, there arw some setup issues, but there is loads of room to improve.

RB just kept improving their car and are already at 100%. Ferrari made a few big design changes and it could take a 2-3 races to fully understand the car and extract 100% from it. The biggest thing is ride height, if they can indeed go lower - there's lots of lap time left on the table.

There won't be another bouncing TD this year and with better race execution and reliability there's quite a lot for Tifosi to hope for, no matter how fast the car is at the first race.

Ferrari are look good but sadly RBR look great .
Biggest problem I have is nobody is pushing them or even putting a small bit of doubt. They are like on cruze mode, everything looks so smooth n under control for them.

[organic]

Carlos said before preseason the car would suit him more and now there is this potentially unexpected understeer.... He is of course happy with it

[LM10]

Discussing (mainly suffering with fellow Ferrari fans lmao). Anyway If you can present me enough evidence, maybe i can go from pessimistic to optimistic

But let's wait for the first race and see what happens at this point.

I'm surely not suffering, quite the opposite. And if I'm being honest, it's tiring and also annoying reading all those pessimistic posts. The season has not even started and you've buried Ferrari entirely. There are far more positives than negatives, but you're exclusively picking the few negatives and making them look like catastrophic things.

In reality, Ferrari's biggest problem at the moment is that they need more time to understand their car and find optimal setups. Normally we would have had another week of testing, but this season we've only had 3 days which is clearly not enough. Every team except RedBull needs more time. RedBull have sorted it out earlier than anyone because they've changed their car less than anyone by the looks of it - at least among the top teams.

[S D]

The rumours reported today by the Italian daily newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport relating to the program carried out by Ferrari could shed a ray of light capable of clarifying/justifying the confidence expressed by team principal of the Scuderia following the testing session in Sakhir.

First of all, it would emerge that a comparison with the program carried out by the team last year would be impractical, as it was done radically different. In the first instance for the huge amount of data that was collected in this session, especially on the first day of evaluating the aerodynamic configuration, compared to last year2. The analyzes of the set-ups and of the individual components were then followed by a busy program carried out by Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz also for the next two days. Of particular interest is the figure relating to the fuel loads adopted in each stint by Scuderia Ferrari. In fact, it seems that all the series of outings, even the short ones, were carried out with a constant load of petrol, with top-ups of 35/40 kg. At no time would have the SF-23 car dropped below 20 kg at the end of the scheduled laps.

MASKED PERFORMANCE – This, in fact, could indicate that the performance shown in the single fast laps has been largely masked, also in terms of how the power unit was used. No less relevant is the data on the fuel used for the race simulation: it seems that it was the quantity necessary to complete the full distance of a Bahrain Grand Prix. If the information reported by Gazzetta dello Sport were confirmed, it would have imposed significant stress on the Pirelli tyres, which are particularly put to the test on a track like Sakhir. Apart from a comparison with Red Bull, the data in itself would not have too much relevance, but considering that Red Bull’s individual stints have always been short, a direct comparison in terms of tire degradation could be less penalizing for the SF-23 car than it seemed at the end of the winter pre-season testing session, according to the Italian newspaper.