Glaring weakness identified in Ferrari’s F1 team by former employee

A former Ferrari staff member believes the team’s main problem this year is the tyres and it is an issue that has plagued them throughout the last decade.

While the SF-23 may not be far off the RB19 in terms of one-lap speed, it is lagging much further behind in race pace with the Ferrari car unable to preserve its tyres long enough to benefit from its own performance.

A key example of this was in the opening race in Bahrain when the two Red Bulls managed to make a soft-soft-hard strategy last as long as Ferrrari’s soft-hard-hard.

It seems to be a problem that no one in Maranello is quite sure how to fix with the latest round of upgrades unable to address the problem.

Ferrari’s former head of communications Alberto Antonini said it was concerning that the tyre issue was solely felt by Ferrari and not also their customer teams.

“For Ferrari, the season started poorly and risks ending even worse,” Antonini wrote in his FormulaPassion column. “If the developments don’t yield the expected results, as was the case in Spain.

“On one hand, it is clear that if the problems are only with the SF-23 and not the other cars, the blame lies with Ferrari and not Pirelli. On the other hand, there seems to be a clear technical communication issue between Maranello and the sole tyre supplier.

Pirelli have been in charge of supplying F1 tyres since the 2011 season but before then Japanese company Bridgestone not only made them but paid Ferrari for using them. It was with Bridgestone that Ferrari last tasted success with Kimi Räikkönen in 2007.

“During the Bridgestone era, it wasn’t like this,” Antonini continued. “But back then, the Japanese [supplier] paid the team each year for the privilege of supplying the tyres.

PlanetF1.com recommends

‘Aston Martin could have won Monaco with a quicker driver than Fernando Alonso’

Christian Horner addresses rumours of huge Red Bull-McLaren partnership

“Together, they achieved incredible things, including making a ‘full radial’ type of tyre work in testing, which means the structure was oriented orthogonally to the direction of travel, while usually there is some degree of inclination. Different times.

“Today, we have to make do with what we have, and it is undeniable that Ferrari’s problems stem from design flaws. Perhaps the centre of aerodynamic pressure, that is, crudely speaking, the resultant of the forces ‘pushing’ on the moving car, is more of a centre in name only and tends to end up on the periphery too often.

“But it is also undeniable that something has not been understood about the fundamentals of these 2023 tyres, in their combination with aerodynamics. To the point that someone in Maranello today laments the lack of an expert who truly knows how to put things together: understanding the difficult relationship between tires, aerodynamics, and suspension.”