Ferrari plans 'small adjustments' to strategy after 2022 review

Ferrari's new team principal Frederic Vasseur says that the team will be making some small adjustments to the way it implements race strategy during the 2023 world championship.

That's following a review of what happened in 2022, which started so well for Ferrari with two wins in the first three events but then unravelled as Red Bull went on to dominate the rest of the year.

While some of that was down to poor reliability - and on occasion, driver mistakes - there were also some high profile miscues by the strategists on the Ferrari pit wall that played a part in putting them into an increasingly deep hole.

The decision to keep Charles Leclerc out track on used tyres for a safety car restart during the British Grand Prix garnered considerable criticism at the time, as did putting Leclerc on hard tyres at a key point in Hungary's race.

The team principal at the time, Mattia Binotto, defended the decisions and resisted calls to point fingers or make knee-jerk responses. But after reviewing the events over the off-season, his successor is set to make some changes.

“Yes we will make some small adjustments,” Vasseur told the media on Tuesday, at the launch of the new Ferrari SF-23 at Maranello.

However he insisted that these would be small tweaks, having warned against the risk of wide-scale changes to the way the team worked and emphasising that the slip-ups hadn't been the fault of one or two individuals.

"What I said last time is that you see just the visible part of the iceberg," he insisted. "When you spoke about strategy, you were speaking about strategist and strategy.

"But it's not just one person pushing on a button. It's software, it's the team at the factory, and it's also process on the pit wall," he emphasised. "It's a complete picture rather than about one person."

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Ferrari's racing director Laurent Mekies revealed that there had been a “very, very extensive review of 2022” looking at “where we have been lacking, because there is no need to hide.

“We have learned some of the things last year in the hard way, so of course we had this 360 degree review," he continued. “What it means for us is that we are concentrating on giving our people the best platform to express themselves.

“We have been reviewing our processes, we have been reviewing the way we are working, in order to ensure each individual can express themselves at best individually and of course collectively."

The team laid down the gauntlet to their rivals by taking the bold step of shaking down their new car in front of the media at today's launch, with Leclerc taking the wheel.

The first real opportunity to see what the SF-23 can do will be next week in the three day pre-season test session at Bahrain International Circuit from February 23 to 25.

After that it's just a week before the first Grand Prix of the season at the same venue. Leclerc won the Bahrain GP last year, and the team will hope to get off to a similarly positive start to the year this time around as well.

After that it will remain to be seen whether Vasseur's small adjustments help the team maintain the same level of performance across the remaining 22 events, and keep them in the running for the title all the way to Abu Dhabi.

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