After a Year of Failures, Ferrari Reveals Game Plan to Resolve Its Achilles’ Heel Ahead of 2023

In 2022, with another failed title challenge, Ferrari realized a lot of glaring issues in their team that need to be resolved for a strong championship campaign. One of these major issues was the team’s pit stops! The Italian outfit has been struggling at making efficient pit stops for a few years now. It perhaps evaded Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz to challenge more consistently for wins. Though, for the 2023 season, Ferrari is looking to change this trend. In an attempt to tackle its Achilles’ heel of tire changes, the team has revealed its game plan for how it will improve its pit stops.

According to Motorsport Italy, the Maranello team has set up a dedicated space where its pit crews practice pit stops. Ferrari is aiming to make about 1000 pit stops and perfect their tire-changing efficiency before the season opener in Bahrain. The chief of the Assembly department, Diego Ioverno, explained the objectives of this pit stop workshop.

Ioverno referred to how their aim is to not make the fastest pit stops as Red Bull does. He stated they want to eliminate their failures in pit stops and make them as repetitive and efficient as possible. Diego also explained the categories of tire changes evaluation: “Those under 3 seconds are considered very good, up to 3.5 seconds are good, but not perfect, under 4 seconds are inadequate and over 4.5 seconds we consider them failures.” [translated via Google]

Thus, Ferrari probably understood that these minute aspects make a huge difference in their eventual results. So, it’s great that they are making this effort to work on their weaknesses. Diego also referred to how they are making roles more flexible. So, even a gunslinger could replace the wheel or vice versa.

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Eventually, if the Italian team can achieve consistency of a sub-3 second pit stop and show it on track, it could be huge. After all, the crazy errors we saw in the 2022 season of missing a wheel or having delays in mid-race pit stops cost them a lot. Although, they also may want to look at their pit strategies in the races.

The Pit Stop and Strategy Blunders by Ferrari in 2022

The 2022 season was more of the usual from Ferrari on several fronts. And one of those fronts was their pit strategies and pit stops. The Monaco GP was the first race when a big strategic error cost Charles Leclerc the race win. A wrongly-timed pit stop for slick tires, when he was on intermediates, put Leclerc out of the podium places in 4th, a race that he led from pole position.

Moving ahead to the British GP, the Scuderia again butchered their strategy for Leclerc. With a late safety car, the team only pitted Carlos Sainz for fresh rubber. Meanwhile, Charles was on old hard tires, vulnerable to everyone behind him on softer tires. Once again, the Monegasque lost out on a podium.

Even Sainz got a taste of the Italian team’s pit-stop blunders in Zandvoort. The Spaniard came in for his 2nd stop of the race but found no front tires ready for him. In fact, the team justified by saying that they were not ready for Carlos coming in. At last, it compromised Sainz’s Dutch GP result with the slow pit stops on both occasions.

On the strategy part again, the Hungarian GP saw a bit of chaos with both Leclerc and Sainz. On a cold chilly weekend, when few teams fancied the hard compound tires, the Scuderia took the bait. Charles, who was comfortably leading the Grand Prix on medium tires in his 2nd stint as well pitted for hard tires and struggled badly.

But Carlos perhaps evaded this blunder by not going for the hard tires. He rather extended his 2nd stint on the medium and pitted for soft toward the end. Although, Sainz has been the victim of those missing wheel errors and numerous slow pit stops, which Ferrari aims to eradicate in 2023.

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It is going to be a more steep task than expected. But, if the Scuderia can resolve this Achilles’ heel in pit strategies and stops, they could go a long way. Leclerc and Sainz will hope that their team delivers after this persistence in improving. Do you think Ferrari will improve in Pit stops and strategies this season?