Despite huge expectations on the shoulders of Ferrari, the Italian team’s start of the 2023 season was not great. However, they have shown great signs of improvement of late and have begun to close down on Mercedes, their closest rival. Now, after the recently concluded Japanese Grand Prix, Ferrari is 21 points away from overtaking their eight-time world champion rivals in the 2023 Constructors’ championship, as per Junaid Samodien on X.
While Red Bull has been the most dominant tea, Ferrari and Mercedes are locked closely for the second spot in the standings. Last year, the battle for P2 had the same teams, but the spots were reversed, as it was Ferrari who had the upper hand at this stage of the season.
That’s a hard-fought P5 for Lewis and P7 for George at the #JapaneseGP.
Got the most out of the opportunities available, rolled the dice with a one-stop for GR and ultimately minimised the points loss in our fight for second in the championship. 💪 pic.twitter.com/NdKg0BBmga
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) September 24, 2023
Speaking about their performances, Mercedes have have steadily improved this season. However, for Ferrari, consistency was hard to come by, with the team going through several ups and downs. Overall, however, little separates these two teams.
How do Mercedes and Ferrari fare head to head?
The performance graph of Mercedes shows that the German team never had a drastic rise to the top like McLaren. From the very first race of the season, they managed to maintain consistency.
The Dutch GP saw them get their lowest points tally with only Hamilton finishing in the top ten . The Spanish GP, meanwhile, saw them maximize their hail, with both Hamilton and Russell finishing on the podium. Ferrari on the other hand, have had a very scattered season, in terms of results.
A strong effort from the boys and some good points for the team 💪#JapaneseGP 🇯🇵 #F1 pic.twitter.com/hex79gwc3n
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) September 24, 2023
The Singapore GP was their best race so far with Carlos Sainz picking up a win, but the recently concluded Suzuka race seemed one of the worst despite having huge improvements in their car. This was mainly because of the evolving characteristics of their SF-23.
The Suzuka track is very demanding when it comes to the tire. Because of this, the Ferrari challengers failed massively as they are nothing but enormous tire eaters, as per Junaid Samodien on X.
The battle for P2 in the constructors’ championship
Admittedly, Mercedes had the chance to build a big lead to Ferrari in the championship in their last few races. If Russell had not crashed in Singapore and Sainz had not lost significant time [over eight seconds], things could have been a lot different.
Nevertheless, the Italian team learned a lot from their test run in Zandvoort. As for Mercedes, James Allison and Toto Wolff are sure to challenge Red Bull in the upcoming seasons. All in all, the battle between these two heavyweights is well poised to treat fans to a spectacular end to the campaign.
As things stand, Ferrari is in P3 with 285 points. Mercedes occupy P2 with 305 points. They has a pole position to show for this season, whereas Ferrari has four pole positions. Ferrari has also won a race, something Mercedes hasn’t managed.
