The old saying goes: "Practice makes perfect." Ferrari will be hoping it is true.
After all, they proved last season that they still have a lot to work on if they are to launch a credible title challenge. The major concern, of course, is strategy – they lost a whole heap of points in 2022 by making the wrong decision in the moment, while champions Red Bull consistently nailed their choices.
But it was far from the only problem area. Another one took place in the pit lane. Errors during pit stops are always going to happen and can often be beyond a mechanic's control, but it happened far too often to Ferrari last year, leading to a lot of lost time.
Ferrari are clearly aware of the issue, as steps are actively being taken to resolve it. A report from the Italian edition of Motorsport.com says the Scuderia plan to practice 1,000 pit stops before heading to Bahrain for testing and the first race of the season.
Chief engineer Diego Ioverno was set up two different teams of mechanics and a special operating room in the simulator building at Ferrari's Maranello base. Each team will practice 20 stops per session, with the goal of making sure every one of them is, at the very least, under three seconds.
The report states that the team has even gone the extra mile to try to replicate, as best as they can, the conditions of a real-life pit stops. As well as all the official gear and tools they will be wearing and using, the mechanics will also have to work around the carbon lengths from which the wires powering the tools descend.
Ferrari won the inaugural DHL Fastest Lap Award when it was first introduced in the 2015 season. But the Italians have not topped that particular ranking since – Red Bull have won it for the past five seasons in a row.
McLaren, who finished second on that list in 2022, actually completed the fastest pit stop of the season, taking just 1.98 seconds to change Daniel Ricciardo's tyres in Mexico. Ferrari were named as only the fourth best of the 10 teams, also behind third-placed AlphaTauri.
Ioverno has set a target of getting 80% of all pit stops in the coming season under three seconds. Last year, Ferrari managed that 73% of the time. He explained: "Those under three seconds are considered very good. Up to 3.5 seconds are good, but not perfect, under four seconds are inadequate and over 4.5 seconds we consider them failures."
