During the last few days, the Italian media made several unexpected claims about Scuderia Ferrari’s future and most importantly about the fact that Mattia Binotto would be replaced by current Alfa Romeo boss Frederic Vassuer at the end of the current season.
The Italian side immediately issed an official press release to deny the information. The statement read as follows: “In relation to speculation in certain media regarding Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto’s position, Ferrari states that these rumours are totally without foundation.”
There was therefore a lot of interest in the Abu Dhabi weekend, as Mattia Binotto was confirmed to take part in Saturday’s press conference at the Yas Marina circuit.
The first question from the media was of course addressed to the Ferrari boss: “Ferrari is the most loved team. Seb [Vettel] said once that everyone’s a Ferrari fan, and if they’re telling you it’s not the case, as a matter of fact, they are. And when there’s such a big passion around it, there’s also… always a lot of criticism and rumours. That has been true in the past, it’s the situation right now, it will be in the future,” – Mattia Binotto replied.
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“When this speculation came out, I had a chat with my chairman, John Elkann,” – the Ferrari boss revealed – “Together we discussed openly what was the best way to move forward and we decided that to release a statement was maybe the best way to close any speculations. Clearly those are speculations, totally with no foundations. I think for me right now, what’s the most important is to make sure to stay focused on the race weekend and for the team not be distracted, because certainly the rumours are always there,” he pointed out.
The media directly asked him if he would still be in charge of Scuderia Ferrari next season and Mattia Binotto continued: “Obviously it’s not down to me to decide, but I’m pretty relaxed. The reason why I’m relaxed, I have always open, frequent, constructive discussions with my bosses, with my chairman, not only on the short-term but the medium and the long-term. More than that, I think if I look back at season, yes we had a few up and downs, we’re not today the best yet, the fastest car on track. But I think we achieved our main objective, which was to be back, to be competitive in that new era of the 2022 cars,” he added.
Mattia Binotto highlighted the Maranello team’s progress this season as compared to the previous ones, but at the same time he admitted that more improment is needed to achieve the final target goal of winning the Formula 1 titles.
Ferrari started the current championship strong, with two race wins from the first three races, but was not able to challenge Red Bull for long, due a series of technical issues, poor strategy decisions from the Maranello pit wall and a few driver errors.
Mattia Binotto explained: “If I look at the way we started season, I think no one… would ever have imagined Ferrari to be so fast at the start of the season, and that is proving that the team has worked very well through difficult moments, such as 2020 and 2021. We remain united. I think it’s a team that not only works well but has proved to be capable. Yes, there are still a lot of things that we need to progress, weaknesses have been shown, but I’m pretty sure that, as we did in the past, we will review, we will try to address them. The team back at the factory is fully focused on 2023, trying to improve. Furthermore, I think this season has been outstanding in terms of pole positions, so qualifying pace; not as good in terms of race pace. We know that we have somehow to improve more the race pace, because then strategy or whatever is around it is a lot easier if you’ve got a strong car in the race itself. So yes, I’m relaxed, but more than that, I’m really focused on what we need to do,” the Swiss-born Italian concluded.
Alfa Romeo’s Frederic Vasseur, who was seen arriving at the Yas Marina paddock yesterday alongside Mattia Binotto was also asked about the Scuderia Ferrari rumours and, somewhat surprisingly, did not in fact deny this possibility: “I won’t say anything. You’ll find out soon enough.”
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