Scuderia Ferrari Ferrari Principal Mattia Binotto pointed out that it would be wrong for people to blame Daniel Ricciardo’s underperformance in the first part of the 2021 Formula 1 championship for McLaren’s current deficit against the Maranello team, as the two rivals are involved in a close battle for third place in the Constructors’ standings, behind Mercedes and Red Bull. Ferrari has regained P3 after the solid result in last weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix and now awaits the Brazilian Grand Prix with a 12.5-point advantage and four races until the end of the season.
In the first part of the 2021 F1 championship, Daniel Ricciardo had a difficult time in adapting to his new team and getting on top of his Mercedes-powered MCL35M, which meant he was constantly outperformed by teammate Lando Norris until the summer break, but has since turned around his form, adding a remarkable win in the Italian Grand Prix to his track record.
However, on paper, better results by Daniel Ricciardo at that moment, or avoiding last weekend’s first lap incident in the start of the Mexican Grand Prix, could have perhaps allowed his team to retain its P3 position in the championship.
But by the same token, Mattia Binotto, while highlighting Carlos Sainz’ contribution to Ferrari’s tally, explains that the Maranello team was also deprived of points earlier in the year due to misfortune.
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“I think that if you look at the number of points that Carlos is bringing, it’s a factor [in being ahead of McLaren], so it’s very important. He has always made a lot of points in the race and bringing a lot of points to the Constructors’, and having the Constructors’ Championship as one of our main targets, it was important for us. So certainly he’s doing very well, certainly that has been important. I don’t think it’s only that because we have been unlucky through this season in some circumstances, Monaco, Hungary, so we could even be a lot more ahead of that. So I would not blame Ricciardo in that battle, I think that would be wrong.” – he explained.
To justify Scuderia Ferrari’s superior performance relative to McLaren in the last few races, Mattia Binotto also emphasized the gains made by the Italian side in the wake of its engine upgrade in Russia.
“If I look at the last races, at least we have been always ahead of them, half a second maybe here [in Mexico] and [it] has been the case in the previous one. So I think at the moment, since we introduced the new power unit, we somehow think we’ve got some little advantage in performance, which is very useful at that stage of the season.” – the Ferrari boss concluded.
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