Carlos Sainz says that Ferrari realised the extent of its issues pre-season after conceding the team is “miles off” in race trim in 2023.
Ferrari holds only fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship amid Red Bull’s dominance and has yet to finish on the podium this season.
“I think analysing the first two races we haven’t got a good trade between qualifying and the race,” he said.
“We are relatively close in quali, we are miles off in the race, we can do a better job in the team maybe setting the car up better for the race and this is what we’re trying to do for the car we have right now.”
Explaining the SF-23 Sainz said it is a “very peaky car, very unpredictable in the race, eats the tyres quite a lot, so we need to improve our package.
“It’s just too peaky and we need to find a way to calm it down a bit and this is what makes the car difficult in the race.”
When asked by Motorsport Week when Ferrari realised its predicament Sainz replied: “It’s a tricky question.
“I think with a change of regulation, the cars becoming slower, we thought that this was normal, that the car would become a bit more peaky, with less downforce.
“We thought with the compensations we did we thought this car, with the targets, was going to be okay, and were going to be fast.
“We got to the first test and saw immediately people haven’t suffered from the change of regulations, they are much quicker than last year and this left us thinking whether we clearly have got something that we didn’t get right.
“The good thing is after this analysis, after the two races, we see where the weakness is, we know why the car is peaky, we see it on the data, and we are pretty certain the others don’t have this characteristics and we can develop in the right direction.”
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