Ferrari believe they can put Verstappen “under pressure” if they repeat Canada form

Ferrari believe they can put Max Verstappen under pressure in today’s Austrian Grand Prix if they show the same performance they had at the previous race.

The two SF-23s will line up second and third behind Verstappen for the start of today’s race. With the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez only 15th, Ferrari believe they have a strategic advantage they can exploit if their car performance is strong enough.

“We’re two-on-one which is a really good advantage, as long as we can keep Max under pressure,” said Charles Leclerc’s performance engineer Jock Clear.

“Obviously we’ll have no influence with that two-on-one if he creates enough of a gap to give himself some breathing pace. Our hope today is the performance of the car and both our drivers will allow us to keep the pressure on him.”

Last year Ferrari started behind Verstappen and got ahead of him by treating their tyres better over a race stint. However they haven’t won a grand prix since then and tyre degradation has been a particular weakness of the SF-23.

The team brought upgrades to address that at the Spanish Grand Prix and Clear said they saw the benefit of them in their performance at the following race in Canada. Having put more new parts on the car this weekend, they are hopeful they will be able to keep Verstappen within range.

“We saw last year it was basically a battle of tyre degradation and that’s what cost Max,” said Clear. “We saw in Canada that our tyre degradation was very good and in fact our race performance in Canada was very much down to how well we looked after our tyres.

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“If we manifest that today then I think we could have a very interesting race because I think Max knows he’s got to create a bit of breathing space because otherwise that two-on-one at pit stop time will be crucial.

“In trying to create a gap, hopefully our performance is such that to do that he’s going to cost himself some degradation and some tyre management. If he’s got performance in hand, that won’t happen. If he hasn’t got performance in hand and he actually has to push to get that gap, then we’ll see the degradation and then we might see a bit of a picture from last year and obviously that’s what we’re hoping for.”

The Ferrari drivers thanked the team for bringing forward the introduction of the upgrade they have on their cars this weekend. Clear said they had arrived earlier “by, realistically, a race, maybe two races.”

The team has been able to push on with its development programme as the car is more reliable than it was last year. Carlos Sainz Jnr retired in the latter stages of the 2022 Austrian Grand Prix due to one of a series of engine problems the team experienced.

“We say that we accelerate things, obviously you push and pull your resources where you need to,” said Clear. “In past years reliability was certainly a real focus and that takes a lot of your attention and you can’t avoid reliability. Touch wood, reliability has been good, and therefore we’ve been able to really push a lot of our resources on development.”

However Clear noted that on the timing screens “page one doesn’t lie” and Ferrari have “got to make up that ground on Red Bull,” who have won every grand prix and sprint race so far this year.

“That has been our focus from the first race of the year where it was evident they had a bit of an advantage on everybody. And in a very tight battle with Mercedes and Aston every little bit counts at the moment.”

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