Ferrari plan big change in quest for glory | 'We're not in nowhere land’

Italian GP: Ferrari head for Monza F1 home under pressure but confident they are on right track What Ferrari will turn up at the Italian GP live on Sky Sports F1 this weekend? After a challenging Zandvoort, the team remain fourth in the standings – what’s gone wrong in 2023 and what are the plans for change for 2024? By James Galloway Last Updated: 30/08/23 6:02pm It's become the perennial question when F1 heads for Monza in the fading weeks of summer: just when are Ferrari going to win the world championship again? It is 307 races and nearly 16 years since Kimi Raikkonen became the ninth driver to take a title wearing motorsport's most famous red.With Red Bull and Max Verstappen sweeping all before them so far this year, Ferrari have found themselves in an entertaining and close, yet wildly inconsistent, battle for the remaining scraps left behind F1's runaway reigning champions. Two pole positions, three podium finishes and fourth place in the Constructors' Championship reads like an underwhelming season for a team of such stature and, fresh from a poor showing last weekend in Zandvoort, it's that record they take into their biggest weekend of the year where almost all eyes in the grandstands will be on the performance of the two red cars.So what's happened to Ferrari's form this year, a world away from that immense early promise shown at the start of 2022? And what are the now-Frederic Vasseur-led team doing to turn things around heading towards 2024?What's gone wrong with their 'peaky' 2023 car? The SF-23 certainly hasn't been the car Ferrari hoped it would be.In fact, they admit they knew that was the case from its very first full test back in Bahrain in late February. A test which had been very different to the one the year before when the Scuderia seemed the ones to have aced the start of F1's new regulation era."We think that our main weakness is on the aero characteristics of the car," explained Enrico Cardile, Ferrari's head of chassis, to the media in Zandvoort last week."So all the focus since T1 [the Bahrain test] when it has been pretty clear that we were not at the level we expected to be, the weakness was coming from there."All the focus, all the efforts has been since T1 on improving the aero characteristics of the car." Ferrari: The last five seasons Season Wins Constructors' 2019 3 2nd 2020 0 6th 2021 0 3rd 2022 4 2nd 2023* 0 4th *nine races left That's not to say that the 2023 challenger hasn't had its moments, particularly in qualifying with poles in Azerbaijan and Belgium (albeit only after a Verstappen grid penalty) and near-misses elsewhere like in Austria.But over the longer distance of grands prix things have regularly been a different story, as evidenced by those fleeting visits to the podium - four fewer than Aston Martin alone."It's no secret this year we have lacked some consistency from the car," said Carlos Sainz last week."It's very difficult to predict which circuits we are going to be quick on, which we are not going to be quick at."Sainz added: "We very quickly identified what the main weakness of the cars is. This we know. Then there's other things like predicting which tracks you are going to be better at compared to others. There's the wind sensitivity, there's track temperature sensitivity that we have, which at the moment makes it a very peaky car."Driving an inconsistent car, the drivers again certainly haven't been infallible, while the team's strategy on track has also been questioned. After 13 races: 2022 vs 2023… 2022 vs 2023 points Change Red Bull 431 vs 540 +109 Mercedes 304 vs 255 -49 Aston Martin 20 vs 215 +195 Ferrari 334 vs 201 -133 Repeating last year's second-place finish to Red Bull ahead of Mercedes in the constructors' standings already appears a tall order, while Aston Martin's improved form in the Netherlands has also added a twist to the current battle for third after Ferrari had appeared to have the better development momentum heading into the break.Ferrari plotting 'very different' 2024 car | And what's the plan for the rest of '23? Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Look back at some of the most dramatic moments to have taken place at the Italian Grand Prix Look back at some of the most dramatic moments to have taken place at the Italian Grand Prix Vasseur, who joined as replacement for Mattia Binotto in January, and Cardile both confirmed in the build-up to last week's race that next year's car would be much-changed."It will be very different, because developing this year's car we realised that some architectural choices we did were not right. It was constraining the development too much," said Cardile."From there next year's car will not be an evolution of this year's car like this year's car has been compared to last year's car, but it will be a brand new car - different chassis with different desig