Mattia Binotto happy with Ferrari performance: "We bluffed Red Bull, Hamilton destroyed tyres"

Mattia Binotto happy with Ferrari performance: “We bluffed Red Bull, Hamilton destroyed tyres”. Mattia Binotto happy with Ferrari performance.

Based on the data from Friday practice, Scuderia Ferrari was expected to be far behind Red and Mercedes in the fight for the podium place at the Yas Marina circuit in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Instead the Italian side had a strong display on Sunday, achieving its two targets it had set ahead of the last round of the 2022 Formula One season.

The Maranello team successfully defended its second place in the Constructors standings, while Charles Leclerc defeated Sergio Perez by maxing the most of a strategy with just one pit stop. Overtaking a Red Bull RB18 car on track would have been very difficult in light of their top speed on the straights and Checo’s solid defending abilities, so Ferrari focused on a different tyre strategy.

The Italian side has been strongly criticized several times during the current championship for bad strategy calls, but this time everything was executed perfectly, as Charles Leclerc pointed out at the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Ferrari chose to stay out after the stop made by Sergio Perez instead of making an undercut attempt which was only ‘faked’ over the team radio.

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto was interviewed by Sky Sport F1 after the Yas Marina race and underlined the excellent performance of all his men in this finale Grand Prix of the season, in Abu Dhabi: “Today Charles Leclerc drove very well. We saw it on Friday and Saturday morning that the race pace was important this weekend, the balance of the car was fundamental as was the handling of the driver. Lewis Hamilton pushed too hard and destroyed his tires in the first stint, Charles managed his tires at the start perfectly and he earned this second place for how he drove today. The team was also very good in terms of strategies because we bluffed Red Bull. Compared to Mercedes we were faster and then they also had a reliability problem. Therefore congratulations to the teams, the mechanics and the drivers.” – Scuderia Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto concluded.