MARANELLO, Italy — The main road running into Maranello from the north has become a point of pilgrimage for Ferrari fans at this time of year. Roughly half a mile from the team’s famous factory gates the road rises up to cross a ring road and — although Maranello’s town planners never considered it — offers a perfect view of the first corner of the Fiorano test track.
On Tuesday morning word spread among Ferrari’s loyal following, known as the tifosi, that the team’s new Formula One car would make its track debut at Fiorano shortly after midday. Hundreds of fans arrived in person to celebrate the unofficial start of the 2023 season and as the surrounding industrial estate reverberated to the sound of the SF23’s V6 engine, the concrete overpass was packed with people.
Inside Fiorano’s gates, Ferrari invited a further 500 fans from its official supporters club to watch the launch from a temporary grandstand. The team’s sponsors were wined and dined in a trackside hospitality unit and a media centre was set up in one of the old stable buildings next to the former farm house of the company’s founder Enzo Ferrari.
Although car launches have no bearing on a team’s chances of success later in the year, the nature of the SF23’s required a certain level of confidence from Ferrari. New Formula One cars are notoriously temperamental and the choice to hit the track at a public event — with a further 200,000 fans watching via YouTube — risked the potential for an embarrassing start to the year.
“It’s relatively high risk to put a brand new F1 car on track in front of so many people and actually enjoy it without any single problem,” Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz said later in the day.
“Normally on an installation lap there are little issues here and there, but today things were running smoothly. I could actually push a little bit in the car in corners and feel a few things.”
Sainz lost out on a toss of a coin to decide which of the two Ferrari drivers would hit the track first, but benefitted from knowing the car had behaved itself with teammate Charles Leclerc behind the wheel before him.
“I asked Charles ‘Is everything OK? Everything feels OK? On the brakes the car feels normal, yeah?’ He said: ‘Yeah, everything feels normal’, and I went out and I pushed and I tried to feel something.”
Just six laps were completed between the two drivers in accordance with F1’s demonstration run regulations, but the car will return to Fiorano on Wednesday to complete a further 100km before heading to Bahrain next week for the start of official pre-season testing.
“I have already given a little bit of feedback to the engineers for tomorrow,” Sainz added. “And tomorrow we have the first 100km where we will continue with the build-up to Bahrain, but obviously until Bahrain we won’t know how the car is handling and how it is performing, but at least we will have covered some nice steps in the right direction.”
A strong start to the season is one thing, but maintaining that performance across the whole year has been Ferrari’s weakness ever since it last won a title in 2008. Despite the victory drought, the team’s goal has not changed in the past 15 years and there was no shying away from the ultimate target of winning the title again this year.
“The goal is to win, clearly,” Leclerc said. “Winning is what motivates me and the team. I’m excited to get back in the car and try to win that championship.”
Last year Leclerc started season with two wins from the first three races, but by the sixth round in Spain Max Verstappen had taken the lead and then never let it go. Ultimately, a combination of reliability issues, strategy mistakes and driver errors put an end to Ferrari’s title challenge midway through the year, although in the second half of the season it was also out-developed by rivals Red Bull.
The disappointment of finishing a distant second in the championship led to the resignation of team principal Mattia Binotto last December and he was replaced by former Alfa Romeo boss Fred Vasseur in early January. It’s a significant step up for Vasseur, but the Frenchman said the same rules of running an F1 team apply.
“The team is bigger but it is not a drama,” he said. “The DNA and the approach of the business is much more important than the size of the company. I think to run a race team is different to a lot of other companies, because you don’t have to motivate the people, the motivation is there and the motivation is very over full in terms of the management.
“The big difference, I would say, is the expectations are different, the pressure is different, but you can take that in a positive way. For sure the feeling and the mood around the team is different — I think it is the only team where when you come to the factory at 7 a.m. you have people waiting for you outside of the gates. You can feel the motivation and the atmosphere around the team and it is a massive push for everyone.”
Vasseur has ruled out an overhaul of the team before the first race, opting to take time to understand Ferrari’s shortcomings before he makes changes. Speaking on Tuesday, he said the priority over the winter had been on fixing last year’s engine reliability issues, which not only resulted in race retirements but also forced the team to turn down the performance of its engine to reduce the risk of a failure.
“I think the priority for everybody is reliability because when you are at this stage of the season and you don’t have the reliability, you are not able to do the three days [testing] and then you are starting on the wrong foot,” Vasseur said. “Based on the data from the dyno we are all optimistic, but only Bahrain will tell us where we are in terms of reliability and performance. So far it is OK.
“On the other topics, the vision you have from outside the team is always a bit different, and as you know it has been very short notice for me and I have spent the last four weeks trying to understand what is happening at the team last year, but I won’t draw any conclusions before the first event and we have to know each other before we take any action.”
However, Vasseur is wary that the strength of Ferrari’s rivals — most notably Red Bull and former champions Mercedes — means the team cannot afford to stop pushing in any area. He underlined the importance of all the team’s departments making gains, again with the clear goal of delivering a title to the tifosi by the end of the year.
“I think it’s the DNA of our sport that you are always trying to improve in every single area,” he added. “It’s not linked to Ferrari or another team, it’s not linked to one department or another one, you are always trying to do a better job tomorrow than today.
“You can speak about strategy or tyre management, but it’s true everywhere. Even if we fix the issue for the next five races, we will be keen to continue and do a better job because it doesn’t matter what happens, even if you win in Bahrain it won’t be the end of the championship.
“We have to keep this focus and keep this mindset, but the championship will be long, we have 23 races and it won’t be over in one direction or another at the end of [the first race in] Bahrain. To improve, you must be aware and never be happy with what you have, because you can always do a better job.
“For me this is the DNA of our sport and we have to keep this ambition.”