It wasn’t the weekend Ferrari was waiting to harangue the morale of the troops. After a disappointing start in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia haven’t been much of a game-changer mood in which the Scuderia evolves at the start of the season and far from bringing them back to the fight for the podium, they found themselves taking a step back and falling to this position of fourth team in the pecking order of this Formula 1, outdated by a Mercedes which took advantage of the start of the safety car on lap 18.

Maybe a little went well was precisely this counter-strategy move that they had performed on Lance Stroll to make one overcut and continue on the right path taking advantage of the fact that Carlos Sainz Jr. seemed to have kept a little more pace with clean air. The Canadian got rid of him, definitively after having abandoned the Aston Martin, but in return he found that George Russell had gone to seek the podium and that, along the way, both Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen had taken the opportunity to overtake him. .

finally it was a sixth place for the Spaniard from Ferrari in front from Charles Leclerc and a new feeling that a good portion of the options were completely compromised in qualifying, all despite the fact that the SF-23 seems to have plenty of muscle when it comes to top speed. Something that seems not to give the expected result if you find later that your rivals are better on the rest of the circuit, Red Bull taking advantage even in the straights.

Sainz himself made no secret of his post-race disappointment, again resorting to self-criticism as a healthy exercise to review what the Saudi Grand Prix has given of itself. In the words of Carlos it is possible to explain what are the main evils that torment Ferrari, especially a degradation that on the Jeddah Corniche track should have been less of a protagonist and which, in the case of the red cars, still seems to be there.

The race was long. In general, it was a long weekend for us. Not that there was much else. The truth is that the pace of Aston Martin and Mercedes surprised us a bit. In the last stint they were clearly a bit faster than us and they got away from us. This is the harsh reality. They have a small lead, especially in race pace, especially in the second part of the relays. We have already seen how Hamilton with a medium rubber escaped. We degrade too much, we wear the tire too much and in the end it complicates the race. But I must say that after Friday, we expected mostly a little more – carlos sainz

Resignation, long-term goals and the feeling of having taken a step back. Ferrari appears to be in a similar position to Mercedes suffered last year after a crisis tormented by the to present, Now it remains to be seen how the reaction to Maranello will be, especially when they have almost a month of deadlock between the races in Australia and Azerbaijan:

We have to keep working, it is clear that we are not where we want to be. The race was difficult for the team. The pace of those in front compared to Charles and me shows that they clearly have a head start. You should bow your head, but not lower your arms, and keep working. There is a long year ahead of us and I think we can improve this car, which I think at the moment in racing is not the fastest – carlos sainz