Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto defended his team’s strategy decisions in this first part of the 2022 Formula 1 season, despite some pretty obvious mistakes, which has led to a lot of criticism from the fans and the media, especially after the events in the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring circuit, but former Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya believes the Italian side’s team boss is not to blame, at least not in the short term
In a rare show of support for the Italian manager, Juan Pablo Montoya explained that “Mattia is not the guy with the strategy, everybody blames him, but he’s not the one. I don’t think he would be the one saying, oh let’s put the hard tyre on. That is why you have strategists, and that is why you pay top people to make those decisions. In Red Bull, it is not Adrian Newey, or Christian Horner making the decisions. It is the strategists that are making the decisions.” – the Colombian racing driver said, in an interview for vegasinsider.com.
Yet many point out that given his role as team manager, Ferrari’s overall performance is indeed Mattia Binotto’s responsibility, which is why he wants to defend his staff and strategists despite some clear errors made on more than one occasion this year. However, credit goes to Ferrari for being able to take advantage of the new rules and regulations introduced in 2022, as the F1-75 is a great project and a superb car, clearly the best to roll out of Maranello in a decade, which is something the former Williams driver and Ferrari rival admitted: “I think Ferrari has the fastest car but, still, they are just not using it.”
Unfortunately Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc have not been able to capitalize on the speed of the F1-75 cars due to some dubious strategy decisions, as too often the Italian team lost out on certain race wins, as was the case even in Hungary before the summer break. At times both drivers have suffered from less than ideal strategy calls or slow pit stops, but for now both Charles and Carlos have backed up the team and did not want to publicly complain about losing races in the pits or due to bad strategy.
Juan Pablo Montoya pointed out how important it is for drivers to be able to trust and rely on the tactical decisions being made from outside the cockpit: “You are kinda told what you are doing, are we going to Plan-B, are we going to Plan-C, you know how they are. And they get in the car, they drive the car as hard as they can. A lot of times, they don’t even know what tyres they are going to put on the car. So what are they going to do? You see them when they leave the pitch, and they go, why you gave me the hard tyre? It is not, you never asked me if I wanted that tyre.” – he explained.
One good example is the Monaco Grand Prix, where Carlos Sainz made his own decision regarding the strategy, which turned out to be the right one, while his Maranello teammate listened to his pit wall and ended up outside the podium:
“I think the inters to drive is the driver’s choice. If you don’t believe, either the condition is still too wet, or something like this, then you don’t risk it. Or, if you are like Red Bull, they can do what Checo says, this is what we are doing, deal with it. Like they did in Monaco, we are taking a gamble when you come in, and he comes in. He might say it is still too wet, they say you’ll be ok. Drive it. But I think in Ferrari, it is a more structured thing, that you drive your car as hard as you can, with whatever we give you. And that’s it. You don’t, you might question it, but that is the decision. And I think that’s what’s happening. You know, whoever is making the decisions, it’s either they are not getting a good read from practice, because remember, most of the times those tyres are run in practice. So they can see the performance of the tyres. So they kind of know what they are going to get. And, if they didn’t, and they gambled it on the race, and somebody else did a long run, and the results, in the long run, were terrible, and they didn’t look at that, it is their own fault.” – Juan Pablo Montoya added.
Which leads us to where does the buck stop at Maranello? The Colombian racing driver, who currently competes in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, believes that the Ferrari team principal since 2019, is not to blame:
“It’s not Mattia’s fault. It is whoever is in charge of strategy. You know, that is the problem, in all these sports, you know, they look at Toto on the TV, they look at Christian Horner on the TV, and so on. They look at Mattia, but they are not the guys making the final decision of what tyre goes on the car. They run the team as a whole. It is like when you own, let’s call it a soda company, and you are not in charge of putting the cap on every bottle. And if a couple of caps come out wrong, you are going to get blamed for it, but it doesn’t mean you did it.”
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At the same time, the former F1 driver added: “Long-term I agree, it is his responsibility. During the [race] weekend it is not. But, the people that are there are his responsibility 100%, or whoever he assigned to be responsible for.”
When asked about what Ferrari needs to do moving forward, Montoya concluded: “I think they will have a good talk about it, I don’t think he is going to change the personnel mid-season. I think the big thing there for me, is how they are going to address it, and how it is going to change. I think they need to stop being so timid with their decisions and be a little more aggressive,” said the winner of seven F1 Grands Prix.
Ferrari is now focused on the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, the first of the nine remaining races this season, which the Maranello team needs to win in order to continue believing in the possibility of recovering the gap to Red Bull.
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