Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has confirmed that he is not worried about Mercedes Formula 1 resurgence in this second part of the season and mainly in last weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix and explained it was due to the different developmental practices which the teams have chosen this season.
Despite the fact that in the first part of the 2022 Formula 1 season Ferrari hoped to challenge Red Bull for both world titles, the Maranello team is now in danger of even missing out on the second place in the constructors’ championship. With two races until the end of the 2022 F1 campaign, Mercedes has closed to the gap to Ferrari to just 40 points.
The Mexico City Grand Prix at the 4.304-kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was probably the worst race of the season for Scuderia Ferrari: Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc finished fifth and sixth and for the first time in 2022 did not have the pace to challenge the W13 cars.
Charles Leclerc finished 68 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen, while Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton was only 15 seconds behind the Dutchman and could have even been closer with a better tyre strategy from Mercedes.
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“Mercedes is coming back,” – Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto admitted – “They have developed more on the car than we did. We know as well we stopped the development of our car quite early, focusing on 2023. So I’m not too concerned by the rate of development because I know as well when we stopped developing.” – he added.
Scuderia Ferrari difficult second part of the season in terms of race pace and tyre management has allowed Red Bull to secure nine wins in a row, including each Grand Prix which was held after the summer break in August:
“Certainly, if I look at the last races, it has not always been great but in Singapore, I think we were very competitive. The one after, Japan, it was in the wet. Yes, we were not as fast as Max but it was not a drama, and certainly not in qualifying. In Austin, in qualifying, we were competitive but not as much as we would have expected in the race. [In Mexico], it was a lot worse. I don’t think it is the same trend because Singapore, competitive; Japan, not too bad; USA, good qualifying. So it was a lot more difficult. I am hoping this is not a trend but it was an [outlying] weekend for us, so the job is to first try to analyse what is going on and what has been the main and try to be back competitive for what is our level of competitiveness, at least for the last two races. We certainly hope to be there and fight for a better result.” – Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto concluded.
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