It's clear that Red Bull and Max Verstappen have emerged from Formula 1 pre-season testing as the favourites. Not only was the RB19 reliable, the only setback being from an oil leak on Day 2, but at the hands of Verstappen it looked effortless. Charles Leclerc has admitted that Ferrari has "work to do" to catch Red Bull, but Team Principal Frederic Vasseur says they are "overall happy" with the ground covered in Bahrain. "Overall I think that we can be happy with the test that we did," he told select media, including RacingNews365.com . "I think overall the car looks okay performance wise, but we don't know about the level of fuel for the others so it's always a bit tricky."
Ferrari: Important to scan every setting on the car
The team spent most of the first day of testing trialling 'extreme' setups on the SF-23, which made it appear as though the team had similar problems to last year. However, Vasseur explained was to get a clear picture of the car performance for the following weeks. He continued: "The most important was to scan every kind of settings on the car because you know that the picture of today is completely different to the picture of next week." Although the team stole the headlines as they produced some of the quickest times of the days running, Vasseur cautioned that the running they did will not be representative of where they will be next week given the track conditions. "Confidence is always relative compared to the others and we don't have the clear picture about the others, the only picture that we will have will be next week to be confident," he explained. "Reliability was okay, so far we cover good mileage, we tick the box of what we have to scan and this was the best approach. "Now in terms of quality of performance, we will know next week where we are. But to be performant on the C4 when the track [temperature] is at 55 [degrees] is not relevant for the preparation of next week."
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