Charles Leclerc, who won the season opener last year, was on his way to grab onto the last step of the podium at the Bahrain GP when his Ferrari said, “no go” and he got a DNF as a result. While the miseries were pilling up for the scarlet team, an older acquaintance was cruising through the field to catch the front runners defeating fellow Spaniard Carlos Sainz. On the supposed path toward greatness, they have only been facing obstacles. The latest one on the list is someone who walked the corridors of Maranello years ago. However, he has risen like a Phoenix at the age of 41.

Yes, we are talking about Fernando Alonso who, after years of trial and even more error, found his match. The self-admitted “anti-hero” is the new thorn in the already not-so-rosy journey of the Italian Team. The golden boy, Charles Leclerc, stands to lose the most. Many believed that the beast that Alonso is, he could have caught up to Leclerc purely on race pace provided by the brilliant construction of Aston Martin.

As quoted by Maximaal.nl, Dutch Race Car driver, Renger van der Zande said, “I think it is very cool that such an Alonso drives forward like a devil out of a box in an Aston Martin. Who expected that? He hadn’t even expected it himself. He was somewhere on the grid and just had to see how it went. Actually, he was held up for a long time, because they had problems at the start, and was almost run off by his teammate. I think he could have caught Charles Leclerc at race pace.”

Throwing light on how the Ferrari was better in qualifying, but the Aston driver overtook them, he states, “On race pace, Alonso might not have been able to overtake him, but the race pace was better than Ferrari’s. The nice thing about this season is that sometimes teams qualify in the front and don’t have much of a race pace and teams sometimes qualify in the back and have a really big race pace.”

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While the looming threat of Alonso seems very real, ghosts of last year haven’t stopped haunting the team that finished as the first of the losers.

Fernando Alonso is not the only problem for Maranello

Tire degradation has been a nightmare that hasn’t stopped tormenting the scarlet team, despite them thinking that the said nightmare was over. Apprehending the same, they saved a set of soft for Charles Leclerc. Hence, they didn’t go for a pole run in the Bahrain qualifying. Moving on to Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, though, there is a level of uncertainty. But the tire trauma for Ferrari seems certain.

Van der Zande said, “With the upcoming Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, there is a completely different circuit on the calendar. In Bahrain, they had tested and everyone knew exactly what to do. But you can’t test in Jeddah. Some are also new to the track and there is different asphalt. If you have more grip, you slide less. Ferrari eats those tyres. So on a low-grip circuit they will have a hard time. Maybe that’s why Jeddah is good, because they don’t slide much, they keep those tires intact.”

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What are your predictions for Ferrari for the 2023 campaign?