The fight for victory will be closer than ever in Canada. After the big step forward that mercedes in the Spanish Grand Prix and the new set of improvements introduced by Aston Martin, Ferrari he also wants to join the battle in Montreal.

It is the goal that carlos sainz marks his team for the eighth round of the championship. Ferrari launched a new aero package at Montmelóreplacing the distinctive tub-like sidepods that worked so well on the 2022 car for a more conventional design, following the style of Red Bull and Aston Martin.

However, these changes did not bring a performance improvement to the SF-23 in the Catalan circuit. Although Sainz took second place on the grid, the Ferrari has once again suffered a great degradation which condemned the Spaniard to fall to fifth position.

The drama was even greater on the other side of the box. Charles Leclerc was unable to overcome the Q1, qualifying in the nineteenth position. The Monegasque was unable to redeem himself from his bad Saturday in the race, finish eleventh and run out of points.

But in the team of Maranello the feelings are very different vis-a-vis the Canadian Grand Prix. The track is full of hard braking and slow corneringfacets in which the Ferrari is one of the most competitive cars on the grid, and it has no high-speed corners, which is the aspect in which it suffered the most at Barcelona.

Sainz, optimist

Carlos Sainz clings to this good understanding between the Canadian circuit and the SF-23 to try to fight for the first places in Montreal.

“We try everything and of course we are all frustrated, but also motivated to change. It’s something we started to see from the end of 2022, when we were very close to Pole on some circuits, but far in the race. Canada is more on the slow speed sidefor that we hope the new package will help us tooSainz explained at a press conference.

The Madrid native believes Ferrari was wrong to test the improvements on a track that would expose the car’s flaws.

“The car has some good characteristics which we are trying to exploit.. That’s why we try to be optimistic. I think that the package worked in barcelonait’s just that the track was full of high-speed corners where we also knew it wasn’t going to be good,” he said.

Ferrari continues to suffer in the race

Ferrari showed they could hold their own against Red Bull in qualifying, but in the race their pace dropped. For this reason, Sainz assures that the aim of the new aero package is to make the car more consistent.

“I believe that we have to keep looking at degradation, but our fundamental problem is race pace. I think my analysis and that of the team is to make a car that is more consistent with the aerodynamics throughout Sunday. Barcelona was perhaps the worst place to introduce these improvements, but when you have new parts you have to try them, and hope they work better“, said the Madrid native.