Carlos Sainz heaps praise on Ferrari for ‘brave’ but ‘risky’ SF-23 launch event

Ferrari’s SF-23 launch might have been “risky” but Carlos Sainz is confident it paid off, as the British GP winner hailed his team’s courage.

The Scuderia’s 2023 launch made for a confident spectacle, sending a warning to Red Bull and echoing the noises coming out of Maranello; where CEO Benedetto Vigna claimed the SF-23 will be “a single-seater that will be unprecedented in terms of speed.”

Presenting the car on Valentine’s Day at Fiorano, Charles Leclerc and Sainz helped show off the gorgeous new Ferrari, decked out in red but featuring more exposed carbon sections this year as the designers sought to cut weight.

Ferrari’s was the eighth car launch in the build-up to Bahrain but it was by far the boldest. Red Bull only revealed their RB19’s livery on a generic render of an F1 car, while the likes of Haas simply released pictures of their design via social media.

Not Ferrari, who invited media and a grandstand packed with fans to attend the event, which saw Leclerc roll the SF-23 out onto the track minutes after the big reveal.

Although Leclerc and Sainz, who jumped into the cockpit after his team-mate’s two-lap session, weren’t red-lining it around Fiorano, the car is still fresh out of the factory. They could have been risking an embarrassing reliability hitch with the world watching.

However, the event was declared a success and anticipation will now ramp up as the clock counts down to March 5. Could the SF-23 be the one to end Ferrari’s 15-year championship drought? Sainz was certainly impressed.

“I think it was honestly amazing,” Sainz said after his laps of Fiorano.

“And I think as Ferrari, I’m going to allow myself to give a bit of praise to the team and what they organised because I think [it] factors in their influence.

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“I think Formula 1 needs these kinds of events nowadays, these kind of presentations where you bring all the media, to bring the fans, to bring our partners, to bring the engineers that are involved in the project, you bring the mechanics that have been working on the car for the last couple of months – you join them all together and you do a proper presentation with the car running.

“You see the actual Formula 1 car running without too much privacy, [all] enjoying the nature of Formula 1.

“And I think we were brave as a team to do it because it’s the first ever installation lap that we did with that car and it can always go bad.

“But we took the risk just to do something a bit different and I hope that you guys enjoyed it – because I definitely did and it was a very good day for the team, for Ferrari and F1.”