New Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur has poured cold water over reports that the team has already managed to find an extra 30 horsepower from its power unit for the 2023 season.
Engine development is officially frozen this season, although teams can still work on improving reliability and gaining efficiencies from their existing power units.
Italian media this week reported that Ferrari engineers at Maranello has managed to find significant extra performance during their work over the off-season break since the end of the 2022 season Abu Dhabi.
But while acknowledging that the team had made progress on reliability, Vasseur emphatically denied the reports about unlocking extra horsepower.
“Regarding the engine, I don’t know where the numbers are coming from but it is just a joke!” he said, as reported in RACER magazine.
“We made some steps, but it is just about reliability. I think the performance of the engine was not an issue at all.
"The issue was the reliability, and the first target is to fix it. So far it looks okay, but the reality on the track is a different aspect.
“I think there are a couple of issues that the team suffered," he continued. "It is not just true for Ferrari, but in terms of reliability it is also coming from the track operation, bouncing and vibration.
“I think and I hope that it’s under control today, that they did what looks to be a good job over the last couple of months," he added. "Everybody will have a much better picture in Bahrain."
Ferrari got off to a flying start to the 2022 season, with Charles Leclerc winning two of the first three races of the campaign to take a big early points advantage.
Red Bull initially struggled with multiple retirements, but then quickly addressed them with Max Verstappen ultimately taking a record 15 race wins, with Sergio Perez adding two more to the team's tally by the end.
Ferrari on the other hand suffered an increasing number of issues as the season went on and became less competitive as a result, although they were managed to finish second in the constructors championship by 39 points over Mercedes.
After taking over from Mattia Binotto, Vasseur's focus as Ferrari boss is to ensure the same fall back in performance is not repeated in 2023.
“Development is very often a strategic choice," he explained. "Now with the cost cap, [we have] to decide if you want to be more focused on the car for the year after or the current one
“I was not there [last year] and I don’t want to make any judgement on what’s happened in the past, but we’ll see during the season."
©Ferrari
Vasseur said he wasn't planning on make any immediate changes to the team set-up, and that he had to settle in and learn how the squad operates before planning any adjustments.
"That would be arrogant from my side to take action on the technical organisation after two weeks," he said.
“We have had discussions on how we can improve the system, what would be the weakness of the system and to try to do a better job.
"But it is more continuous improvement rather than a big step or big changes, which from my point of view wouldn’t make sense.
“I trust the guys in place and will try to do the best for them also to do the job. It will be time after a couple of weeks or months to take action if it is not working, but I trust them.”
Despite finishing last season with a 204 point deficit to Red Bull, Vasseur insisted that winning the title this season was by no means out of reach for Ferrari.
“It’s an obvious target,” he said. “When you are in a top team you can’t have another target than the win at the end of the day.
"You can’t start the season saying, ‘Okay, I would be happy with P2’ - that would really be a lack of ambition. I think we have everything we need to do a good job and the target has to be to win, for sure.”
Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
