The recent Australian GP form history that will boost Ferrari in F1 2023

Can it really be that Charles Leclerc left the 2022 Australian Grand Prix with a crushing win over Max Verstappen even before the Dutchman’s retirement? And with it, a 34-point lead in the standings of a championship (46 over Verstappen) where Leclerc was ultimately comprehensively defeated?

Not only did he do all that, but this time a year ago it was Red Bull facing a massive reliability worry while Ferrari seemed to have something of an edge on performance at the start of Formula 1’s new ground-effects era. The RB18 feeling a significant weight loss at the next round at Imola then followed and Ferrari, also for various mainly self-inflicted reasons, was then never truly on top again.

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And, as it heads back to the scene of the last place it must’ve truly felt happy and confident against the Verstappen/Red Bull juggernaut, things look very different for the red team in 2023. Sure, it managed one more one-off tyre management victory for Leclerc in Austria in 2022, plus Carlos Sainz’s maiden win in the Silverstone chaos, but otherwise Red Bull has, results-wise, really been running rampant for a full year.

Right now, Leclerc is eighth in the drivers’ championship, Ferrari fourth in the constructors’ – Sainz suggesting last time out in Jeddah it has lost its place as Red Bull’s main rival given Aston Martin’s off-season gains and Mercedes’ strength even with a package it is about to abandon.

Ferrari’s poor reliability in Bahrain and the knock-on to Jeddah is behind Leclerc’s lowly championship positioning. He has been one of the team’s few bright spots so far in 2023 – threatening pole in the season opener and in round two even with his looming engine penalty. Another small Ferrari success story is its pitstops – and its mechanics producing the fastest in each of the opening two races.

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Red Bull’s stifling success is leaving many F1 observers looking for such small glimmers to provide hope in what may well be Verstappen sweeping to a third successive title, unless Sergio Perez can maintain his late-Jeddah-race potential for the rest of the campaign. So, the recent F1 history of Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit can provide some stimulus for Ferrari. At a track where it enjoys considerable support – Leclerc’s 2022 victory went down very well – it can boast three wins from the previous four races.

Leclerc comfortably had the edge over Verstappen prior to his retirement last year - can a Down Under return see Ferrari recapture its best form?

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Valtteri Bottas’s 2019 season-opening victory breaks Ferrari’s run since 2016, but that was at least a year where it showed class-leading pace – even at the very next Bahrain race in Leclerc’s first win heartbreak. Although it should be noted that Sebastian Vettel did need virtual safety car assistance to beat Lewis Hamilton in Melbourne’s 2018 event.

But at the very least this shows how certain venues can reward teams that are struggling in the face of overwhelming opposition superiority. Like how Red Bull (and sometimes Ferrari too) could genuinely bother and beat Mercedes in Monaco at the start of the turbo hybrid era.

In Leclerc’s dominant 2022 Melbourne display, Ferrari got the vital set-up adjustments considering track evolution and event temperature changes right. Red Bull got its sums wrong regarding packing on downforce for the added race day heat and ended up with badly grained tyres at this front-limited venue.

PLUS: How decisions Ferrari aced and Red Bull regretted led to Leclerc’s 2022 Melbourne masterclass

Leaning on this experience when applying the calculations required for getting the best from the new 2023 Pirellis in Melbourne will be an important boon for Ferrari, which felt it was closer to Red Bull on another front-limited layout in Jeddah. But it’s worth remembering here that last year the RB18’s extra weight and understeer tendencies created additional sliding that wrecked the rubber further in Leclerc’s masterclass.

The team insists its defeats have so far been down to set-up choices impacting tyre performance and management, not that its car’s aerodynamic package is bad

But the Melbourne layout can further boost Ferrari, as the best lap times will require good traction – something the red cars were tracked possessing favourably compared to Red Bull in Bahrain and Jeddah. Albert Park’s smooth asphalt should aid tyre management and Ferrari has navigated the track evolution factor as that surface grips up through the weekend well in the past. Formula 2 and Formula 3 rocking up here this year now presents an additional challenge on this front.

The Melbourne crowd is finally set to see the reprofiled layout’s four DRS zones in action – the fast, sweeping blast section of Turns 8-9 was dropped ahead of FP3 last year on safety grounds, but with campaigning from some teams too. The FIA is committed to the whole cohort this time around, which could mean the fastest ever F1 speeds ever logged at Albert Park, possibly reaching 210mph before Turn 11.

The major track work conducted ahead of Melbourne’s post-pandemic return to the F1 calendar was completed as part of a bid to enhance overtaking. But even with four DRS zones this will still be a challenge here given the track’s narrow street-circuit nature and this could be seen in the hardly-action packed 2022 event.

Good traction, a Ferrari strong suit with the SF-23, should be rewarded at Albert Park

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Perhaps then, Leclerc getting amongst the Red Bulls in qualifying could result in long-held high positioning in the race. Pirelli keeping its compound choice to an in-step C2-C3-C4 should also widen strategy options this time, after its C2-C3-C5 approach meant the softest was a qualifying-only tyre in 2022. But the C2 undid Ferrari’s Saudi race as it struggled to get and keep the hards warm enough to be competitive…

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Realistically, Red Bull remains the heavy favourite this weekend. And to have any success Ferrari will have to defeat the rapid Fernando Alonso for the first time in a 2023 race too. The Spaniard’s Aston package will additionally benefit from dumping its higher drag in all the DRS zones in qualifying, where Alonso was a pole threat for Alpine in 2022 before crashing, breaking his hand and pushing Q3 into the sunset.

Ferrari is expected to bring minor updated parts to this round. And that summed up the state of play for the Scuderia leaving Jeddah. The team insists its defeats have so far been down to set-up choices impacting tyre performance and management, not that its car’s aerodynamic package is bad.

"It’s not because we had a poor stint with the hard [tyre late in the Jeddah race] that we have to stop the development on the aero, the suspension or the engine," Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur said last time out.

PLUS: How Vasseur has begun Ferrari’s mission to keep Leclerc on side

Melbourne is the last of the three outlier track types F1 seasons have now begun with in recent years. But with two more fast street tracks coming up in Baku and Miami before more ‘normal’ ground returns at Imola and Barcelona, Ferrari is running out of specific circuit ranges where the SF-23’s altered approach in shedding peak downforce for straightline gains compared to 2022’s F1-75, which Vasseur insists can be made to work, will surely shine.

Vasseur also said in Jeddah that Ferrari “cannot bullshit ourselves” that “we have to change, we have to understand where we are wrong, and we have to push". But this begs the question of when Ferrari may have to act drastically – as Mercedes has recently done in opting to drop its W14 aero concept – so that it can finally reclose the gap to Red Bull and not have to rely on specific tracks or circumstances to gain a fleeting edge…

After its disappointing start to the year, can Ferrari truly begin its 2023 in earnest?

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images