He looked uncomfortable Charles Leclerc in the first two days of the preseason, and something else settled in the SF-23 during the morning of Friday. He got a lap in the C4 that was 12 thousandths quicker than Carlos Sainz’s. The Monegasque driver does not go into detail about the strengths and weaknesses of the new Ferrari, but hints that there have been steps forward and also backwards: “Car? Alright. We have had very intense days of testing. The first day was to collect data, the second was more complicated trying to find the ‘set-up’, and Saturday morning was a little better. But there is still work to be done.”
“It’s a different car, it drives differently and that’s what the tests are for, to try different styles until on Saturday morning I found my way.” “It’s different, I won’t go into details but I think it’s gone in the right direction. It is more efficient, but other features have changed. We will be faster on the straights and we will suffer a little more in the corners. With these three days of testing we are still working to find the point of the car in terms of ‘set-up’. We haven’t found it yet, ”he says about the particularities of his new car. A year ago he took pole position at the Bahrain GP and won the race. In 2023, that seems much more difficult given Red Bull’s superiority, one lap and long runs.
