Ferrari's lack of race pace in the 2023 F1 season explained

F1 journalist Giulano Duchessa recently gave one of the reasons why Ferrari lacks race pace in the 2023 Formula 1 season.

The difference in pace over one lap versus the race pace was most evident in the Azerbaijan GP. During the new sprint format, Charles Leclerc took poles for both the sprint and the main race, but his car crumbled in both races as Red Bull easily overtook him after a few laps.

In a piece published in Corriere della Sport, Duchessa explained how the Ferrari SF-23 puts way too much load on the tires, so much so that they lose their grip just after a few laps.

"The new Ferrari uses the tires too much when they are new and uses them poorly when they lose their initial grip," Giulano Duchessa said. "The reason is simple: it still doesn't get the expected load from the aerodynamic platform. By removing stiffness, you get more traction, but you end up exposed to harmful bouncing in high-speed corners, which is the reason for Leclerc's crash."

"The rear suddenly lightens, dangerously losing the suction effect, just enough to throw the stability of the car into crisis," he added.

Later, Duchessa compared Ferrari's SF-23 to their last-year car, the F1-75. The 2022 F1 car was much better since it provided aerodynamic stability with any tire on any track.

"Yet the SF-23 is an evolution of the old car, but the F1-75 was a car that went well with any type of tire and on any type of track, bumpy or not," he said. "Although it did not have revolutionary mechanics, it guaranteed aerodynamic stability by always providing a lot of load on the tires while paying in resistance compared to Red Bull."

Since the SF-23 is putting way too much pressure on the tires, the team is unable to have a good race pace as their tires smoke right after a few laps of running.

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Charles Leclerc on how difficult it is to drive the Ferrari SF-23

Charles Leclerc finished seventh in the 2023 F1 Miami GP. He was simply unable to push forward and fight with the drivers ahead of him.

After the race, Leclerc explained how difficult it is to drive the Ferrari SF-23 since the car behaves drastically differently with each tire compound.

"We’re going from one compound to the other and we never know what’s going to happen on the new compound," Leclerc said. "It’s always an unknown whether the car is going to react well, whether the tyres are going to be in the right window."

"This is just very difficult also as a driver to gain the confidence and to adapt your driving because you get from one set to the other and the car is completely in a different window," he added.

As of now, the main concern for the Italian team is to improve their tire management and bring more stability to their 2023 F1 car.