Carlos Sainz revealed Ferrari are already using free practice sessions to help their development for 2024, and said the team fully understands what they need from next year’s car.
Ferrari unusually didn’t run the soft tyres at all in FP1 for the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix as they finished 16th and 19th, but Sainz went on to record yet another fifth place finish in the race.
However, Ferrari elected to put more focus into the actual race weekend at Monza, but are expected to revert to using practice to learn about their car during the flyaways.
“I think we fully understand what we want from next year’s car and where we want to put the car next year on what characteristics we want the car to have, obviously it’s another thing whether we can fully achieve it or not,” Sainz told select members of the press, including Total-Motorsport.com.
“We are fully focused now on the simulator, on the wind tunnel, and even on free practices, taking time to still keep experimenting with things to make sure that we have everything covered for next year’s car.
“But there’s some very specific circuits that’s not worth it, maybe like Monza or Singapore, and then there’s circuits where you can definitely learn a lot.”
But Ferrari are still in 2023 constructors’ championship fight
Sainz added Ferrari are still fighting this season, sat 11 points ahead of Aston Martin and 45 points behind Mercedes in the constructors’ championship.
“Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a constructors championship to fight with Mercedes and Aston Martin and we still believe we can come out on top if we do a perfect job,” Sainz added.
“We’ve done a decent job in terms of development, this year I think we are up there in terms of who has developed the most. Apart from McLaren, normally we’ve been lacking against Mercedes and Red Bull in the development but this year I don’t feel like we have.
“What we haven’t managed to do is to take away the the characteristics that make our car extremely tricky to drive in some circuits because it’s an intrinsic problem in the car that you cannot take away in development, you take it away by redesigning.”
