“Nobody promised the world title this season, we showed up ready for the first race of the year and nobody believed in our competitiveness at the beginning of the year” – Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto was interviewed by Sky Sport at the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and reiterated a concept that he had already expressed even earlier in the season, when the Maranello team was in full battle to win the world title.
Interviewed also by the BBC, the team principal of the Italian side underlined that “being competitive and winning the World Championship are two different things”. The F1-75 at the start of the season came had a strong impact in the hands of Charles Leclerc, who secured the race win in the opening round of the campaign, the Bahrain Grand Prix (with Carlos Sainz completing a memorable one-two) and also took victory in Australia, opened a significant gap against the competition after three rounds of the season.
The Mercedes W13 was unable to emerge as a top car until the end of the season unlike the Red Bull RB18, which reacted to the initial troubles with an amazing progress that even forced Scuderia Ferrari to surrender and abandon dreams of glory even before the summer break.
Everything started to go wrong for the Maranello team, from poor strategic decisions to reliability issues, including a driving error by Charles Leclerc in the French Grand Prix.
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Precisely at the Paul Ricard circuit, Max Verstappen became aware that he would be crowned world champion again in light of the advantage he had in the standings alongside a Red Bull that in Austria had lost aerodynamic balance due to some unproductive updates which were quickly fixed. In Abu Dhabi, Ferrari saved what could be salvaged, namely the two second places in the World Championships, a result that should not be overlooked at all if we consider that the Maranello team had come on from two years without victories.
Mattia Binotto gave his team a high mark, not hiding that there is still one definitive step to take, the most difficult one: “The rumors about my future annoyed me, because the team was disoriented. But I’m proud, they reacted together giving a strong signal. There was a lot of criticism directed at us, but our shoulders are strengthened, we will only count on ourselves. With the management we will talk about the medium and long term solutions, stability is important. What we need to improve? Engine reliability, even here we limited the power as a precaution, and race pace: strategies will become easier at that stage. The vote for this season? Between 7.5 and 8, even if it hasn’t been a perfect season. But the goal was to get back to being competitive, nobody believed it, we achieved it. We didn’t promise to win, we weren’t mature and ready for victory. That has to be the next step and it will be the most difficult” – Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto said in today’s edition of Repubblica.
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