Fred Vasseur hopes that Ferrari will “take a step forward” with the improvements made in Jeddah

According to Frédéric Vasseur, team director, Ferrari will bring its first improvements to the SF-23 during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and hopes to reduce the gap with Red Bull.

In Bahrain, Charles Leclerc, who will start at best 11th on Sunday in Jeddah, abandoned the race while Carlos Sainz crossed the finish line, all while complaining about the significant tire degradation towards the end of the race, which prevented him from securing the third step of the podium.

However, one of the strong points of the SF-23 on the Sakhir track was the top speed in the straights compared to the RB19. And since the Jeddah circuit is a track that favors straight-line speed, Vasseur expects it to be a weekend where the Maranello car performs much better.

“The characteristics of Jeddah are completely different from those of Bahrain, in terms of grip and layout, [which means] that it’s a completely different story,” he indicated.

It is likely that there will be a slight difference from what we have today. We will also bring updates to Jeddah and I hope we will take a step forward.

Vasseur remains optimistic

Despite the disappointing start to the season and the departure of key members of the design team, including David Sanchez, Fred Vasseur still believes in the concept of the car and believes there is “plenty of room” for improvements.

« For me, it’s a performance issue, it’s not a conceptual problem. We now have the car that we have, and we had a little trouble with the balance over the weekend », he added.

This means that we have a great margin to improve our car and our package. I don’t want to talk about updates or new parts, but in Bahrain, I think we had a lot of room for improvement in terms of handling.

Optimize the car on each track

He indicates that the team must understand how the car behaves on more than one track, before drawing conclusions about the car’s concept while maximizing performance.

“The most important thing is to stay focused on the current situation in order to make the most of what we have today,” the Frenchman raises.

Even if we bring updates and improve the situation and competitiveness of the package.

But it is important to keep in mind that Bahrain is not always representative. We are only at the beginning of car development, we have only done three days of testing on a single circuit, and we need to better understand the car itself in order to try to make the most of it.