Closing the gap to Red Bull next season will be a tall order for any F1 team, including Ferrari. But Carlos Sainz wants the Italian outfit to head into 2024 believing that it can do it.
Sainz had the privilege of being the only driver to inflict a defeat upon Red Bull in 2023, the Spaniard and Ferrari winning last September’s Singapore Grand Prix, a triumph that ruined the bulls’ prospects of achieving a historic 100% win record during the season.
However, the Scuderia’s results this year were only good for third place in F1’s Constructors’ standings, with Mercedes claiming the runner-up spot with a mere three-point advantage over its rival.
Ferrari will need to make substantial strides during the winter, in terms of the pace and efficiency of its forthcoming design and of the flawless execution of the team, if it aspires to mount a challenge against Red Bull.
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But Sainz believes the team has the means of its ambitions.
“I think it has to be our realistic aim, yes,” he said. “Will we manage to do it? Only time will tell. But I want the team to be thinking that is possible, because I believe it is.”
Sainz highlighted McLaren's remarkable performance improvement in the 2023 season as evidence that powerful advancements are also possible for the House of Maranello in the coming months.
“McLaren has been able to do these steps during the season – I’m perfectly confident that Ferrari can do it over a winter break,” he said.
“I trust this team. I trust the capacity that we have back at home to turn things around.
“There’s still circuits where we are on pole by three-tenths to a Red Bull. It’s just that is a very specific trait of the car that really is good – we just need to make it an all rounder.”
Indeed, Ferrari’s SF-23 was endowed with several strong assets described by Sainz as its “straight line speed, braking performance and the performance in 90-degree corners or short duration corners”.
“Also the kerb riding, I think it’s a very strong point,” he added.
But Sainz suggested that Ferrari might need to lessen part of its strengths to build up other qualities in order to produce an overall better car.
“The [2023] car has very, very strong points, but I feel like if we want to have a car for the whole year, maybe we need to give away some of this these strengths to make sure that we are quick everywhere,” he explained.
“Especially in the race. I think in the races, we need to really focus on understanding what are we doing to this car, what are we doing to the tyres that is not allowing us to compete in the races at the level of Red Bull and McLaren – in Brazil, for example, in Austin, in circuits where you can clearly see we just don’t have the race pace.”
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