The 2022 season saw Ferrari shoot themselves in the foot more often than they were actually beaten.
The team’s power unit was a very powerful one, but the Scuderia ultimately experienced too many reliability issues to take advantage of this pace.
Alongside a multitude of strategic errors, the team saw themselves drop a number of points as a result of engine failures, leading Ferrari to tone down the power output of their engine.
Heading into the 2023 season, rumours have suggested that the Scuderia have managed to make their car over a second faster than it was in 2022, with an addition 30 horsepower being part of the reason for this.
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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has admitted that he expects Ferrari to improve from last season, suggesting that fixing their reliability issues will be key to a potential title challenge.
“In theory, nobody can gain a lot of horsepower anymore,” he told Auto Motor und Sport.
“But Ferrari obviously has reliability problems last season. If they have fixed those problems, they can get more out of the same engine this year. That will inevitably lead to progress at Ferrari.
“I think Ferrari has a lot more margin so we have to take that into account. We all saw how they really scaled the engine back last year after their reliability issues.
“We only had minor reliability problems last year – certainly not to the extent of Ferrari.”
Should Ferrari be able to solve their reliability woes this year, the team will be confident of leading a title charge with the talented driver pairing of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
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With both drivers having their eyes firmly set on the title this season, they will both be hoping that their team can also solve their strategic problems, with so many strange calls costing them points in 2022.
The arrival of Fred Vasseur to replace Mattia Binotto should be a huge step forward for the team, with the inner workings of the team clearly not resulting in a winning formula over the past few seasons.
Mercedes are also tipped to return to winning ways this year, leading to an exciting potential three-way title race for the first time for around a decade.