Scuderia Ferrari has revealed the new SF-23 Formula 1 car that it hopes to be able to challenge for the world championship this season.
In an event at Maranello on Valentine’s Day, the Italian outfit was joined by new team principal Fred Vasseur as well as its drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz for the unveiling.
The SF-23 builds on the progress the team made with last year’s F1-75, which won four races and secured 12 pole positions.
But, after failing to capitalise on early season promise as rival Red Bull roared to both championship titles, Ferrari has undergone a winter of change.
Mattia Binotto stepped down as team principal before Christmas and has been replaced by former Alfa Romeo chief Vasseur.
The new team boss knows that the pressure is on him to capitalise on the momentum that Ferrari has built up over recent seasons.
Speaking to the media recently, he was clear, however, that he felt Ferrari did not need a radical evolution to be able to deliver on its world title ambitions.
“I’m really convinced that Ferrari today, and, for sure, my experience is limited to the last two weeks, but we have everything to win,” Vasseur said in his first media call.
“We have to put everything together to do a good job, but we have everything to be able to win.
“You can have a look at the results of the last decades that the wheel is always running, and it’s just a matter of continuous improvement for me.”
While Ferrari hopes the new SF-23 will deliver aerodynamic improvements, one key area of focus for the team has been in lifting its engine reliability.
Leclerc’s title challenge suffered major blows at the Azerbaijan and Spanish Grands Prix when the driver suffered engine failures when in the lead.
In a bid to sort out its troubles, Ferrari had to turn down its power unit for much of the remainder of the season before finally being able to unleash more potential at the season finale in Abu Dhabi.
Another key factor that Ferrari will be looking to address is working out what prompted it to make several key strategic mistakes over the season, and ensuring there is no repeat in 2023.
The SF-23 is certainly a good-looking racing car. The black and red livery works well and the Ferrari brand on the rear wing looks so nice. Fingers crossed the team can finally achieve the championship this season.
Social media and official website:
https://twitter.com/ScuderiaFerrari/status/1625453057155768321?cxt=HHwWgoC97bC84o4tAAAA
https://twitter.com/ScuderiaFerrari/status/1625427531523407873?cxt=HHwWgoC-iczu1o4tAAAA
https://twitter.com/F1/status/1625452236083003398?cxt=HHwWjIC8scuM4o4tAAAA
https://twitter.com/F1/status/1625455140693065729?cxt=HHwWgoC-tdS1444tAAAA
https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/formula1/articles/first-fire-up-for-2023-car
News stories:
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.first-look-ferrari-reveal-their-2023-sf-23-f1-car-at-maranello.5WjlGOI2Lcxo6EzGcsOuHC.html
https://the-race.com/formula-1/ferrari-2023-f1-car-launch-sf-23/
https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12474/12810026/ferrari-reveal-their-valentine-as-new-car-launched-for-2023-formula-1-championship-challenge
https://www.racefans.net/2023/02/14/first-pictures-ferrari-reveal-new-sf-23-car-2023-f1/
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferrari-focused-on-car-balance-weaknesses-with-sf-23-f1-car/10432120/
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferrari-planning-small-adjustments-to-f1-strategy-processes-for-2023/10431991/
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/new-ferrari-feels-good-says-leclerc-as-team-avoids-wasting-filming-day-slot/10431966/
Carlos Sainz says Ferrari was “brave” to hold a large-scale, public launch for its 2023 Formula 1 car – especially including its first installation laps as part of the event.
The Italian team took the covers off its SF-23 challenger at its Fiorano track on Tuesday as part of a launch occasion that was open to invited media and a grandstand full of Ferrari fans.
After a short series of interviews with Sainz, his teammate Charles Leclerc and new team principal Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari completed the SF-23’s initial laps – with Leclerc driving for two tours before handing over to Sainz.
Although the runs were very short and had to be completed on demonstration Pirelli tyres with the drivers unable to fully push, such a move was still a risk to conduct in public given the early stages of preparations for the coming campaign and the possibility of an early reliability issue – not uncommon on F1 cars not long built – occurring.
But it stood at odds with 2023 launch events conducted by other F1 squads – some of which, such as Red Bull’s season launch, did not even feature 2023 cars on display.
“I think it was honestly amazing,” Sainz said of his first experience of the SF-23.
“And I think as Ferrari, today I’m going to allow myself to give a bit of praise to the team and what they organised because I think [it] factor in their influence today.
“I think Formula 1 needs these kinds of events nowadays, these kind of presentations where you bring all the media, to bring the fans, to bring our partners, to bring the engineers that are involved in the project, you bring the mechanics that have been working on the car for the last couple of months – you join them all together and you do a proper presentation with the car running.
“Where you see the actual Formula 1 car running without too much privacy, [all] enjoying the nature of Formula 1.
“And I think we were brave as a team to do it because it’s the first ever installation lap that we did with that car and it can always go bad.
“But we took the risk just to do something a bit different and I hope that you guys enjoyed it – because I definitely did and it was a very good day for the team, for Ferrari and F1.”
When asked if he felt it had been a positive off-season for Ferrari after its ultimately disappointing 2022 campaign, Sainz again moved to praise its extensive public launch.
“Yeah, the first thing that I’m positive about is everything that we did today, nothing went wrong, everything went perfect,” he explained.
“It’s actually, as I said before, relatively high risk to put a brand new F1 car on track in front of so many people and to actually get to enjoy it without any single problem on track – normally in these installation laps there’s always different issues here and there and today the car was running smoothly.
“I could actually push a bit on it and lean a bit in the car in the corners and feel the first things. And we’ve already given some feedback to the engineers to work on for tomorrow.
“Tomorrow we have the famous 100km [filming day permitted in F1’s rules] where will continue to do the build up to Bahrain.
“Obviously, until Bahrain we will not know how the car is performing and how the car is handling, but at least we’ve already covered some nice steps in the right direction.”
Source: Motorsport.com