Ferrari has deployed its second major upgrade package in as many weeks in Austria. According to the pilots, the whole team worked very hard to prepare the new parts for Austria. It paid off. Both drivers report improvement after Saturday. Although we don’t yet know how the SF-23 single-seater will fare at race pace, according to Carlos Sainz, it is definitely faster in high-speed corners.
Racing pace and high-speed cornering have been Ferrari’s weakness until now. After the end of the Austrian qualification, it does not seem that the engineers have slowed down the car in the qualifying pace while working to eliminate these shortcomings. Charles Leclerc’s second place and Carlos Sainz’s third are proof of that.
“Yes, I’m a bit disappointed with third place, but at the same time I hesitated in Q2 and paid for the track limits, so we decided to play it safe and put on another fresh set of tyres. It wasn’t ideal, but I felt great in the car and I was fast all day. Third place for the start of Sunday’s race is a good starting position,” he said after qualifying Carlos Sainz.
“We’ve continued our Canadian form so now we need to focus on Saturday and we need another good day,” he added.
Performance of the improved package and speed at race pace are the two biggest question marks surrounding Ferrari this weekend. So far, both pilots are sending positive signals in this direction and, like Charles Leclerc, even Carlos Sainz couldn’t resist a satisfied smile.
“Yes, it feels great,” said the Spanish racer about the improved car. “I felt quite a lot of progress in the fast corners, which was our biggest weakness in Barcelona. It seems that at least we have moved in this direction. Of course, now we will test how we are at race pace.”
“We know that on Sunday the performance of our car varied from circuit to circuit. We’ll make sure we put everything together, but it will be more challenging in the race than in today’s qualifying.” he added Sainz.
2023-06-30 18:32:24
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