F1 News: Fred Vasseur unconcerned by Ferrari laptimes during Bahrain testing
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur is not worried about the strong performance shown by Red Bull in pre-season testing.
The newly appointed Ferrari boss will be under pressure to deliver for the Scuderia, with the Italian squad yet to secure an F1 World Championship since the 2008 Constructors' title.
Vasseur has not been afraid to speak frankly about the team's objectives, which he outlined quite candidly at the beginning of the year:
"When you are in a top team, you can't have another target than to win. You can't start the season saying you are happy with P2 - it would be a lack of ambition."
It is no secret that Ferrari should be contending for F1 World titles, but Vasseur's straight-talking approach is quite different to how his predecessor Mattia Binotto managed expectations.
In any case, as is standard during pre-season, the teams in the paddock have worked on calculating who has developed the best package for 2023.
Red Bull has quickly emerged as the favourite going into the opener at Bahrain, with concerns circulating about Ferrari's performance and - more pressingly - tyre wear.
Whilst there are few doubts the Ferrari SF-23 will be competitive in terms of one-lap pace, there are fears the team will fail to match Red Bull over a race distance.
Speaking to the media, Vasseur refused to predict Ferrari's performance relative to Red Bull:
"What is true is that on one lap pace, you are not able to judge because you don't know if they are running with 20, 30 or 50 kilos," motorsport.com quote him as saying:
"And they don't know if we are running with 20, 30, or 50 kilos. It means that it's very difficult to do any kind of comparison."
"The only thing that you can judge is when you are doing a race simulation.
"Because you know that, if you don't stop the car and you do 55 laps, it means that you started with 110 kilos. It's the only one [where fuel loads are relatively known]...
"But again, the race next week, even between the start of the race and the end of the race, it will be a different story."
Although Red Bull is the favourite to have the edge season, Ferrari is still perceived as their biggest threat for 2023.
However, many unknowns surrounding the Scuderit make their performance a challenge to analyse.
Reliability will be a key element of their level of success this year, and this can only truly be gauged once the lights go out in Bahrain.
As Fred Vasseur mentioned - despite issues with tyre wear in Bahrain pre-season - fuel loads can vary significantly between teams.
Not only does this impact how laptimes can be analysed, but it also makes it difficult to assess how significantly the SF-23 is limited by tyre wear.
Different wing specifications were also used in pre-season testing, so this is another area that makes it difficult to make predictions ahead of the opening round.
Still, Vasseur and Ferrari will have the spotlight on them throughout the year as they look to compete for the Championship.