Ferrari suffers from the excessive power of Red Bull in Bahrain
The debut Grand Prix of the 2023 season at Sakhir was for a long time even more boring than could have been anticipated. Impossible for everyone to stem it overpower Red Bull, with Verstappen barely seeing anyone in the mirrors on the first lap. The RB19 was, as Leclerc rightly said, in another category. Compared to last season, Newey’s new car is lighter, with much more downforce and with a rear anchored to the asphalt, the ideal characteristics for this first track. The high load level also ensured a practically non-existent degradation, so much so that the two Red Bull drivers were the only ones (along with a good Williams) able to carry out a strategy with the first two stints on soft tyres. The work on the set-up then perfected the balance, which was not perfect at the beginning of the weekend, but for Verstappen the first victory was literally a walk in the park, so much so that his engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, via radio literally no longer knew how to slow him down, I keep telling him “Just bring it home”, until he lowered the engine power in the last stint and asked him for a “target lap time” about half a second higher than what the Dutchman was doing on the track.
Red Bull with 1 second per lap ahead
An advantage of approx 1 second per lap on all, a figure that speaks for itself and which also allowed a far from incisive Perez to finish quietly in second place after overtaking Leclerc. From the Sakhir we therefore exit with the certainty that the RB19 is efficient, with a lot of downforce And with a very strong rear.
Aston Martin second strength of the weekend
Another certainty that we can identify from this first race is that the new Aston Martin has proven itself on the track second force. Fernando Alonso had risked losing his chance for a podium finish in his debut race in Stroll’s team car, with a bad first lap that had thrown Hamilton and the Mercedes back ahead of the Asturian. The AM23 was the car with the higher level of vertical load that we noticed on the track, which forced Alonso to a first stint on the soft rubber waiting behind the cars of Barckley, but which then allowed him to change pace with the hard compound. The high level of downforce also forced the number 14 car to a low top speed, making overtaking more complicated. The latter factor was also influenced by the 80 meters less DRS zone on the main straight, where we saw much less tussle than in previous years. Alonso therefore had to construct his overtaking in a creative way, then finding one beautiful maneuver on Lewis Hamilton before and on Sainz after, projecting himself towards third place, obviously also thanks to the withdrawal of Leclerc.
Also for Aston Martin the main factors of certainty are the high aerodynamic load and the great stability of the rear axle. The latter is a feature that adapts so well to Alonso’s driving style and that was more than fundamental at the Sakhir. To understand if Stroll’s team will regularly be in the podium area, we’ll have to wait for tracks where the balance shifts much more towards the front. Jeddah won’t be definitive proof, but it could give us insight into something more about it.
Ferrari: a performance to be “translated”
Without mincing words, the one who comes out of the first race of the season with really broken bones is the Maranello team. The gap from Red Bull was practically 1 second per lap, with Leclerc who could bring home the podium thanks to a good start and an excellent first stint on soft tyres, which had opened up the advantage over Alonso, but with a car which proved to be inferior to the Aston Martin in terms of race pace progression. The Monegasque was preparing to resist the Asturian’s return in the final laps and from a short simulation we did, we understand that Leclerc would have had the potential to hold onto third place, although probably battling in the last two laps.
There is much to say about the performance of the SF-23 and we will look into some aspects in a dedicated article in the next few days, but what seems to have happened is that the new creature from Maranello has come out of the tests with an aerodynamic problem at the front end. The front wing obviously doesn’t behave as it should, especially at high angles of attack, putting a good part of the car’s aerodynamic system in crisis. One comes from it marked understeer, very difficult to correct. Further increasing the level of downforce at the rear without being able to make the relative corrections with the front wing would have exacerbated the aerodynamic imbalance even more, in addition to the fact that the structural instability seen on the rear wing made it a complicated choice to adopt in any case . In the end the Maranello technicians had to obtorto neck opt for one rear exhaust trim, the absolute worst thing for the Bahrain circuit, lowering and stiffening the car as much as possible to try to recover the downforce that cannot be obtained from the wings. A so-called “acceptable” longitudinal balance was found, which limited the degradation in some way, but which still forced the riders to do an enormous job of rear management throughout the race. In fact, to avoid collapses, Leclerc and Sainz literally had to go slowly, thus explaining why the data does not show marked degradation but a simply slow car on the track.
The low setting on asphalt then also triggered the return of porpoising, especially for Sainz, who evidently had a slightly softer suspension package than Leclerc, so much so that in a radio team the Spaniard asked the team the reason for such a marked bouncing of his car, with a “hopping” voice similar to that of someone driving on cobblestones. The reliability problem is also a sensational setback, even if the impression from the sound and the absence of smoke is that it is not a problem relating to directly mechanical components, therefore potentially solvable in a short time. Overall, Ferrari therefore seemed to have presented itself unprepared at the first round of the season, with a setup far from optimal and with a total defense approach while the factory tries to solve the problem on the front quickly. If the detachment from Red Bull was sidereal, we must also admit a further consideration, partially more positive for the redhead: despite all of the above, Leclerc was managing to finish on the podium, bringing home the set result and Sainz was still managed to fend off Hamilton’s return, putting both Mercedes behind, put (for now) even worse than the Prancing Horse team. Therefore, even after the first tender, the goodness of the SF-23 project remains impossible to evaluate. When the aerodynamic system will be corrected and the cars will be able to take to the track with the most congenial setup, then the Ferrari season will begin and it will be possible to make the appropriate assessments, in the hope that for the fans of the red the “longest ever” season will be only for chronological extension.
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