Mattia Binotto comments on Ferrari’s performance at the 2017 Italian GP. Ferrari Chief Technical Officer disappointed with the result at Monza.

The official crowd figure for Sunday’s 2017 Italian Grand Prix was 75,000 (167,000 for the weekend) but it felt like far more than that; there was a great enthusiasm from the fans and they certainly made plenty of noise, even though Scuderia Ferrari did not win and was not able to fight with Mercedes in its home race. Mercedes won the Italian Grand Prix by a good margin on a weekend when the Maranello team strangely did not have the pace, despite the fact that Ferrari proved to be close just one week earlier, at the Belgian Grand Prix. This time Sebastian Vettel finished 36 seconds adrift in third place, while his Finnish teammate Kimi Raikkonen had difficulties in fighting with the Mercedes-powered Force India car of Esteban Ocon during the first part of the race.

The Silver Arrows’ dominant showing at Ferrari’s home Grand Prix is a further blow that is also indicative of the momentum shift to Lewis Hamilton and co after the summer break. Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne said that he believes the Scuderia underestimated Monza, urging the Maranello team to investigate why it’s deficit to Mercedes was so big and Scuderia Ferrari Chief Technical Officer Mattia Binotto agrees that the Italian side needs to get things in order and quickly bounce back to be able to continue the championship fight with Mercedes:

“It has not been a positive weekend for us, we could even say that this has been the most difficult weekend of the entire season given the fact that we never looked like being able to challenge for the win. It is disappointing, especially because we wanted to give our fans a much better result. But the situation doesn’t change, we need to continue to carefully analyse what went wrong and improve to fight back. Singapore has a configuration which could play into the hands much better, but our goal is to be strong on every type of track and unfortunately we were not competitive at Monza.” – Scuderia Ferrari’s Chief Technical Officer Mattia Binotto concluded, as reported by the Italian media.

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton now has 238 points in the Formula One Driver Standings, three more than Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel with seven races remaining. The next round of the 2017 Formula One championship will take place on the Marina Bay Street Circuit and will mark the 10th anniversary of the Singapore Grand Prix.