Ferrari boss remains confident that the team can beat Red Bull: "I’m completely convinced about this"

Even though Ferrari did not finish on the podium and faced a power loss in one of their cars in the Bahrain GP, Frederic Vasseur is convinced that the car and the team are capable of fighting for the championship.

Almost everyone on the F1 paddock has admitted that Red Bull will be untouchable in 2023. However, the new team principal at Ferrari still has hope. When asked whether their SF-23 could give the Austrian team a fight after getting upgrades, Vasseur explained how the car's concept is solid and how they only need to focus on changing the setup and other smaller aspects. He said:

"I’m completely convinced about this. I never saw a car that was able to match the pace of another one in qualifying and not be able to in the race. Then, it is a matter of setup and some choices on the car. But this is not a matter of concept at all. I don’t think that we have to go in this direction."

Ferrari are the only team that looks strong enough to give Red Bull a fair fight if their wind tunnel upgrades work later in the season.

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc admitted that Red Bull is extremely strong. He explained how Ferrari's qualifying speed is on par with their rivals', but the SF-23 crumbled during the race. The Monagasque believes that his team needs to find the pace that the Austrian team already has. Leclerc said:

"It’s not good enough. We are far from Red Bull, so we need to push and understand what did they find during this break because they are on another planet on race pace. I mean, for now, we don’t know. We are fast in qualifying, but we are not fast in the race, and it’s not by a little. So I think Red Bull found something big somewhere, and we need to find that."

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Ferrari team boss addresses the unknown issue that caused Charles Leclerc's DNF

There is a lot of uncertainty in the Ferrari paddock, as they do not know the exact issue with Charles Leclerc's SF-23 that caused it to shut down during the Bahrain GP. Frederic Vasseur explained how the car did not encounter this problem during any of the sessions prior to the first race of the season. He assured fans that the Italian team is hard at work to find and resolve the issue. Vasseur said (via RaceFans):

"We never expected to have something like this because it’s the first time that we had it. We didn’t face the same issue at all during the six or seven thousand kilometers that we did with the engines last week with the three teams. And we never had the same issue on the dyno throughout the winter. But again, we need to do a full investigation before to be able to give you a proper answer.”

Reliability problems of this magnitude are a sign of concern for the Prancing Horse team as they try to chase Red Bull for the championship, who are having a nearly faultless start to the season.