Mercedes placed third - an incredible 244 points behind champion Red Bull - and saw its streak of eight straight constructors' titles snapped.Īt the center of the disappointment was seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton. The team is coming off its worst finish since 2012. Mercedes will be eager for a fresh start after last season's disaster. "The mood in the team is perfect, and we are in a good shape to start this long season." - Nesci Lars Baron / Getty Images Sport / Getty Can Mercedes bounce back? "We have scanned a number of items on the car and ticked many of the boxes of our program without worrying about lap times or what the others have been doing, simply focusing on ourselves," said Vasseur of the three-day test. Even if the raw lap times didn't leap off the page, Leclerc, who won the opening race in Bahrain last year after a brilliant battle with Verstappen, was encouraged by the correlation between factory data and how the car performed on the track in testing. Though Red Bull clearly has the edge going into the supersized 23-race season - the RB19 looked nigh untouchable in the hands of Verstappen in preseason testing - both Leclerc and Sainz were upbeat about the balance and overall feel of their equivalent, the SF-23. In his stead comes Ravin Jain, who'll assume the hot seat this weekend in Bahrain. The Frenchman quickly shifted chief strategist Inaki Rueda out of the high-pressure position and into a sporting role at the factory in Maranello. Vasseur, who replaced Binotto in January, wasted no time addressing the main area of concern as he aims to deliver Ferrari's first championship of either kind since 2008.
By season's end, those mistakes left Ferrari well adrift of Verstappen and Red Bull. Baffling in-race decisions by the team took plenty of points off the board last year, including, most notably, a bungled pit-stop strategy that cost Leclerc victory at his home race in Monaco.
However, the team is confident it has properly identified and fixed the reliability flaws and believes it can operate in more aggressive engine modes that'll provide an immediate gain of 0.2 seconds per lap.īut no matter how many ponies are powering the Prancing Horse, continued strategic failures would make those improvements moot.
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Yes, there were some reliability concerns and avoidable driver errors along the way.
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He didn't waste time addressing one of the glaring issues that plagued the Scuderia last season.ĭespite boasting impressive machinery and an extremely talented driver lineup in 2022 - the duo of Leclerc and Carlos Sainz is back again - Ferrari's encouraging start to the campaign fizzled out thanks, in large part, to an exasperating series of strategic blunders. His replacement, former Alfa Romeo boss Fred Vasseur, cuts a more assertive figure. Valente Dan Istitene - Formula 1 / Formula 1 / Getty Will change at the top fix Ferrari?Īffable as he was, Mattia Binotto ultimately appeared out of his depth as team principal of Formula 1's most storied outfit. But winning three straight? That would put the Dutch driver in all-time great territory, joining only Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, Juan Manuel Fangio, and Sebastian Vettel in accomplishing the feat. Claiming a third title would put him alongside legends like Ayrton Senna and Niki Lauda. One way or another, 2023 will be about Verstappen's chase of history. Will that hamper his 2023 challenger, the RB19? Judging by the preseason timesheets, it didn't seem to have a visible effect, but as seen in the past, it'll be impossible to make any definite statements until the lights are out in Bahrain. But perhaps the single biggest unknown in Verstappen's path is the impact of Red Bull's cost cap penalty, which resulted in a 10% deduction in allocated wind tunnel time.
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