German manufacturer Audi has confirmed that it will enter the Formula 1 World Championship starting from the 2026 campaign as a power unit supplier and has now been urged to sign former Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto as fast as possible in order to have a better shot of boosting its Formula 1 entry for the 2026 championship.
Mattia Binotto has been in charge of the Ferrari Formula 1 Racing Division for the last four tears and has been working in Maranello for almost three decades, but the Italian manager handed in his resignation following the 2022 Formula 1 season, with the Ferrari senior management losing trust in him. After a series of negotiations, Ferrari seems to have reached an agreement with its ex-boss to extend his gardening leave period from six to 12 months, which means Mattia Binotto would not be able to join a rival team during the next year.
As a result, if Audi would be interested in signing the former Ferrari team principal, he could only join the German company in 2024, but he would still have two seasons to work on the project for 2026 and share his knowledge to help Audi in the development stage of its new Formula 1 power unit.
Starting with the 2026 campaign, when a new generation of rules and technical regulation will be introduced for the power unit, Sauber becomes the Audi works team that has already been making important progress towards its F1 entry despite the three-year wait.
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Cesare Fiorio, a former Ferrari sporting director, currently employed as a TV commentator, feels that Mattia Binotto represents the perfect candidate to join Audi on a long term project, taking into consideration his prior engine pedigree in Maranello.
“If I were to enter F1, like the Germans, I wouldn’t let him get away,” Cesare Fiorio said in a recent interview for the Italian daily newspaper Corriere dello Sport when asked about the former Ferrari boss, who made a name for himself during his time as head of the engine department and chief technical officer, before being promoted to the role of principal in 2019: “I would have kept him [at Ferrari]. I have always considered him a great technician. The F1-75 was, with Red Bull, the best car of 2022.” – added Cesare Fiorio, who previously worked in Formula 1 with Ligier and Minardi.
When pointed out to him how Ferrari lost both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships in 2022 due to a series of operational mistakes, power unit issues and poor strategical decisions from the Maranello pitwall, Cesare Fiorio concluded: “They weren’t won because of a lack of reliability, some bad strategies and some driver errors. Binotto was a great engineer, but being team principal is another job.”
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