Vasseur 'proud' of Ferrari SF-23 launch and live demo

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur praised the Scuderia for its no-nonsense presentation at Fiorano, where the team's actual 2023 car took to the track and thrilled the fans.

There was no glitzy or overstated ceremonial when 11h30 am rolled around at Fiorano, where Ferrari showcased its new SF-23 in a short video in front of a grandstand of fans and with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz in attendance.

But the cherry on the cake for the Tifosi was the unexpected presence of a genuine SF-23 in the circuit's garage that was fired up and took to the track for a few demo laps.

The display was preceded by a dramatic tongue-in-cheek toss of the coin recorded earlier at Maranello for who would get to drive first. Leclerc won the privilege of putting two laps under his belt while Sainz was second but was given three laps of Fiorino as a compensation.

The launch was certainly very different from the static or virtual shows put together by Ferrari's rivals and was a massive success with the fans. Sempre Ferrari!

"This is a good feeling," commented a happy Vasseur. "The look of the launch of the other teams I think it was a bit virtual or online.

"I don’t want to speak about the others but I’m more than proud to do something like this with all the tifosi around the track, with guests, it’s a really big event and for us it’s the best way to start the season."

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Carlos Sainz was equally enthusiastic about how the presentation had gone, noting however that it had been a "high risk" affair for the team.

"I think we’ve nailed it, to be honest," he said. "I think a launch like this is also a bit what’s missing in F1: getting the fans involved, getting the media, getting the partners involved. It’s been a great day.

"First thing that I'm positive about is in everything that we did today, nothing went wrong, everything went perfect," he said.

"It was actually relatively high risk, you want to put up a brand new F1 car on track in front of so many people and to actually get to enjoy it without a single problem on track."

Like Leclerc before him, Sainz sampled his new mount while pushing a bit to get a feel for the new machine.

"Normally in all these installation laps, there is always issues here and there, and today the car was running smoothly," he added;

"I could actually push a bit on it, lean a bit on the car in the corners and feel the first things. We've already given some feedback to the engineers to work on for tomorrow."

On Wednesday, both Leclerc and Sainz will be in action once again at Fiorano where Ferrari will conduct a proper shakedown of its car as part of F1's authorised 100-km filming days.

"Tomorrow we have the 100km where we continue to do the build up to Bahrain," said the Spaniard.

"Obviously at 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."

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