Ferrari says level playing field won’t happen immediately. Binotto predicts top teams will continue to have an advantage .

While Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto acknowledges that the 2021 Formula 1 rules go a long way to level the lopsided playing field, he predicts top teams will continue to have an advantage for at least three years before performance levels out.

One of the hallmarks of the new era will be the controversial budget-cap among a raft of changes to level the playing field, which at the end of the current era is severely tilted towards Scuderia Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull.

As a result within Formula 1, there is what many refer to as Formula 1.5, teams that are on average well over a second slower than the pacesetters. In the ‘race’ to pick up the crumbs that fall of the table of the big three.

One of the goals of the new rules is to enable smaller teams to at least compete for podiums and even wins which has not been the case in this hybrid era.

Asked by La Gazzetta dello Sport, if he expected the pecking order to change in 2021, Mattia Binotto replied, “These new rules will provide stability to F1 for the next five years, but next year I think the teams with more resources will have a competitive advantage over the others. In 2021, the scenario will not be very different from what we have today.

“Certainly the new regulations are designed in such a way that the degree of freedom of development will be greatly reduced compared to today. I am quite convinced that we will arrive at the ceiling of performance soon enough – within three years. The performance gap between the first and last will be reduced.” – he explained.

“In short, the goal that Liberty Media has set itself to level the playing field could be achieved but it won’t happen immediately,” predicted the Ferrari team principal.