After Bahrain disaster, Ferrari have a mountain to climb in 2023 and Carlos Sainz isn't very optimistic

If the prancing horse believed they would have positive start to life under Frederic Vasseur, they have certainly gone back to the drawing board after the Bahrain GP.

Carlos Sainz in a file photo. (Image: Twitter/Scuderia Ferrari)
By Nilavro Ghosh | Mar 18, 2023 | 2 Min Read follow icon Follow Us

It’s only been one race in 2023 so far and a similar story of Scuderia Ferrari being in a soup is already doing the rounds. If the prancing horse believed they would have positive start to life under Frederic Vasseur, they have certainly gone back to the drawing board after the Bahrain GP earlier this month. The opening race of the season is one where teams usually go in with a positive outlook and confidence, and Ferrari was no different. However, what ensued in the race certainly deflated that confidence they might have had going into it. Firstly, in qualifying, Charles Leclerc could not stay out on track for the entirety of Q3. Secondly, in the race, Leclerc’s engine gave out towards the end of the race and the Monegasque had to settle for a DNF at the start of the season.

Although he did not suffer as much as his teammate, Carlos Sainz has spoken up about the reliability issues faced by the Scuderia, and he did not exactly sound optimistic. “For sure we are relatively concerned,” he said. “It’s not the way you want to start a season, with a penalty in race 2 and breaking the battery, the ECU in the first weekend.” What the Spaniard was talking about was the change of the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) on Leclerc’s car. Each team is allowed two ECUs per car per season. Ferrari, however, had to already take three after both the ECUs failed on Leclerc’s car on the very first race weekend of the season.

“On Sunday, we had two different issues,” said team principal Vasseur. “The first one was on the Sunday morning, when we did the fire up, and the second one was in the race. Unfortunately, it was two times the control unit, the ECU.”

Sainz talks about reliability

Talking about reliability, Sainz continued, “Clearly we are not happy with that and we identify it as a weakness. But this is the first time we’ve seen this failure in a very, very long time, so it caught us by surprise. We’re putting things in place to fix it and I’m pretty sure that we were capable of fixing that in the short term. It’s a bad situation. but now we can only look forward and improve.”

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The Scuderia were pegged as Red Bull’s biggest challengers ahead of the start of the 2023 season. However, after race one, that idea already seems a bit far fetched, Especially now with Aston Martin proving their worth and becoming the second fastest team in Bahrain and in Free Practice in Jeddah, Ferrari have more than just Red Bull to worry about.

New boss Fred Vasseur’s start to life at Maranello has been challenging and it will be interesting to see how the wily veteran navigates his way through this mess and gets the Scuderia to decent place in the championship this season.