Italian stallions losing speed, but there are no quick fixes for a flawed Ferrari

Ferrari is in trouble. Serious trouble. Following a successful start to the 2022 Formula 1 season, it was believed that, given the technical rules and regulations are essentially unchanged for this year, the team would be in a good position to continue its upward trajectory.

Sure, 2022 quickly unravelled for the Italian team, but they had a good car and were clearly the second quickest of the ten competing teams.

At the SF-23's launch earlier this year, drivers Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz praised the car for feeling better to drive, but as soon as pre-season testing was underway, it was clear that they were not the next-best team anymore.

And last time out in Australia, F1's most famous team was the fourth-quickest outfit.

A misleading design

The technical rules and regulations implemented for the 2022-2025 F1 seasons have been designed to reduce the performance differences between teams. In other words, it allows the slowest team to compete with the quickest one eventually.

And, yes, it worked! Kudos to F1's technical heads for this.

But - and there's always a but - if a team gets its original (2022) car design wrong, they can hit a design ceiling quicker.

Red Bull's car design leaves the most room for improvement and updates, but not many teams, including Ferrari and Mercedes-AMG, have that privilege as the design directions they have taken have limited their room to move.

It's the reason that Aston Martin changed its design direction by producing a car for 2023 that resembles the Red Bull.

Sainz and Leclerc have made U-turns on their opinions of Ferrari's SF-23, with the former highlighting several areas the team must improve the car on.

"Right now, we're not where we want to be in terms of race pace, in terms of [the]