Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto has rejected seven time world champion Lewis Hamilton’s claim that the Maranello team is “several months ahead” with its F1-75 car for the 2022 Formula 1 car.
Lewis Hamilton feels that while Mercedes and Red Bull were involved in a full and very intense battle for the 2021 Formula 1 title, Scuderia Ferrari had the opportunity to focus mainly on ths car for the current championship and therefore be better prepareed for the start of Formula 1’s new era.
Several media outlets and pundits felt Scuderia Ferrari impressed during the first pre-season testing session at the Circuit de Catalunya. And Lewis Hamilton claimed that “you would assume they perhaps didn’t do as much development last year and just put everything into this car. So does that mean they’re several months ahead?” – the Mercedes driver wondered.
While Lewis Hamilton suggested Ferrari were a few months ahead of Mercedes at this stage of the season, Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto confidently and somewhat ironically predicted that there will be a huge swing in that dynamic ahead of the first round of the 2022 Formula 1 season, hinting that Mercedes have been sandbagging in the Barcelona test: “I’m sure once we get to Bahrain, it will actually be them who are two or three months ahead,” he said in a recent interview for Sky Italia – “It was important for us to create a good basis, but we have a very long season ahead of us and I expect very strong competition from the first race.”
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It remains to be seen if Mattia Binotto is being coy or whether the Silver Arrows will indeed show their true potential in the second testing session at the Bahrain International circuit. For now, the Maranello team believes Mercedes and Red Bull will have deliberately been holding back their true performance in Spain: “Racing teams hide the true potential of their cars, some more than the others. It’s much too early to be able to correctly assess the performance of the various cars.” – Mattia Binotto added.
At the same time, the Ferrari Team Principal admited to being surprised about how different the various 2022 challengers look whilst still posting “comparable” laptimes, but added “I’m assuming the field will get even closer as the season progresses.”
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