In a pre-season of so far underwhelming or even downright misleading car launches, Ferrari’s spectacular debut of its 2023 title challenger was a breath of the kind of fresh air you can only get in central Italy.
Into the temporary grandstand at the team’s famous Fiorano test track packed 500 famously passionate tifosi, allowed to gather in person for a launch for the first time in three years.
In attendance were drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz and new team principal Frédéric Vasseur.
In the garage was the car the team hopes will banish the sour memories of last season and bring the championship home to Maranello, the SF-23.
In an age of launches becoming increasingly about digital renders of paint jobs and endless marketing guff from sponsor bigwigs, this was proper old-school Formula 1.
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But it was near the end of the roughly 50-minute presentation that Ferrari really went all-in.
Charles Leclerc jumped into the cockpit of his new machine and took it for a spin around Fiorano for its first shakedown, much to the delight of the cheering fans.
Driving the car at a launch, strange though it may sound, has become highly unusual in recent years. Often the cars presented are actually old models or show cars with new liveries — placeholders while the real thing continues to be built behind the scenes. Most teams also don’t own a test track, to be fair.
Most of all, though, is that it’s not uncommon for these sophisticated machines to break down or suffer problems the first time they’re taken for a drive — not a great look when you’ve got thousands of people tuning in online and the media in attendance for what’s supposed to be a hype-building exercise.
And it’s for this reason Ferrari’s decision to send Leclerc and later Sainz onto the track for a live check of systems and basic performance was so bold.
Unreliability, after all, was at the very heart of Ferrari’s title flop in 2022. Being the first team to publicly show off its new machine was very much a statement of intent: the Scuderia isn’t here to play it safe; it’s here to grab its championship chance with both hands.
‘WE’RE IN A GOOD PLACE’
It’s easy to forget that Ferrari burst from the blocks in 2022 with arguably the fastest car on the grid before the season quickly soured. Charles Leclerc won two of the first three races, but his third win three months later in Austria was his last of a campaign that quickly turned into a Max Verstappen whitewash as Red Bull Racing developed its car into the ascendancy.
But the story wasn’t as straightforward as Ferrari simply fading off the pace.
At the Spanish Grand Prix, the sixth race of the year, the team realised it had a serious engine problem when Leclerc retired from a comfortable lead in a cloud of smoke. Two races later both Ferrari cars blew up in Azerbaijan. In Austria Sainz’s car suffered a fiery late failure. The Ferrari customer teams suffered from unreliability too.
The only workable interim solution was to detune the engines to preserve reliability.
Not only did that mean less power, but it meant the car’s aerodynamics no longer worked as intended, having been designed with a certain amount of drag expecting a certain amount of power.
In turn the drivers had to push harder to keep pace. Tyre wear degraded. Strategy mistakes were made to compensate. Engine penalties were taken.
The season spiralled out of control.
So it’s no surprise that engine reliability has been at the centre of the team’s off-season.
“Last year it’s not a secret that it was not the best aspect of the engine,” new team boss Vasseur said, having used Ferrari customer motors at Alfa Romeo last season.
“I think last year the window for the engine was very small.
“The regulations are crystal clear that the engine is almost frozen. We can change something just for reliability.
“But we did a good job at the factory, and I think that now we are ready for the season.
“In terms of power, we will be there.
“Let’s see what happens this season, but I think we’re in a good place.”
Of course Red Bull Racing won’t be standing still, and just getting back to early-2022 pace won’t be enough. But one of the Italian team’s lesser heralded strengths is its design creativity, and the way much of the grid so far this year appears to bear some influence of Ferrari’s 2022 design direction is testament to it being on at least a fruitful development path.
It’s one crucial piece of the puzzle in place.
WHAT ABOUT STRATEGY. QUESTION.
There is, however, that further question about the team’s pit wall, with strategy mistakes so frequent last season they become the stuff of memes.
While former boss Mattia Binotto protested fairly that some questionable calls weren’t really errors but simply a response to a car that had fallen off the pace, his resignation at the end of the season speaks to the faith the team had in his management of Ferrari’s chronic weakness.
But despite calls for blood in some quarters, Vasseur isn’t putting a broom through the strategy department.
Speaking after taking up the most under-pressure role in motorsport last month, the Frenchman said it wasn’t a matter of people so much as process that the team needed to tune.
“Very often when you’re speaking about strategy, it’s much more a matter of organisation than the guy on the pit wall,” he said, per ESPN. I’m trying to understand exactly what has happened on every single mistake, what happened last year and to try to know if it’s a matter of a decision, a matter of organisation or of communication.
“Very often on the pit wall the biggest issue is communication and the number of people involved rather than the individual. If you put too many people discussing about the same thing, when you have the outcome of the decision, the car will be on the next lap.
“You need a clear flow of discussion, and clear flow of communication between good people in the right position. It’s work in progress.”
EVOLUTION, NOT REVOLUTION
In fact Vasseur has been admirably restrained in his first months in the top job. Ferrari management changes ordinarily precipitate mass restructurings, but the Frenchman appears certain that the team already has the tools at its disposal to win; they just need to be harnessed more effectively.
Vasseur was ordained because of his man-management skills. His tenure at Sauber, for example, may not have delivered spectacular results — always off the table considering the team’s meagre funding — but did leave the Swiss squad in much better shape than he found it, so much so that it became Audi’s preferred target for a takeover.
And it’s difficult to disagree with Vasseur’s assessment. The massive upturn in form in the last two years proves it — recovering from a woeful sixth in 2020 to title contention last year is recovery of a pace practically unheard of in F1.
“I mean, 2022 was a good step forward compared to the difficult years that were 2020 and 2021,” Leclerc said. “But we finished second in the constructors championship and also finished second in the drivers championship, so I’m really, really looking forward to this new car.
“I think we’ve done a great job working on it and trying to address the weaknesses that there were on this car. Hopefully it will be better.”
On paper it’s just one more step, and with the right engine and a steady guiding hand at the top, there should be no team more capable of taking it than Ferrari, the best resourced and best decorated in the business.
“The goal is to win, clearly,” Leclerc said. “The feeling of winning is what motivates me, what motivates all the team too. So I’m really looking forward to getting back in the car and hopefully trying to win the championship.”
The proclamation was met with cheers from the assembled Ferrari fans, and shortly afterwards they were treated to the sound of the SF-23 as it cut through the crisp late-winter air for its very first laps.
It felt like confidence. If the season goes anywhere near as spectacularly well as the launch, this year that confidence won’t prove to be misplaced.