Ferrari boss insists race strategy isn’t a ‘weakness’ for team despite high-profile errors
Ferrari’s mistakes in pit-stop timing and tyre selection denied Charles Leclerc potential wins at Monaco and Silverstone, and again most recently in Hungary
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Your support makes all the difference.Ferrari principal Mattia Binotto insists the team does not have a strategy weakness despite several costly decisions through the season so far.
Charles Leclerc finds himself 80 points behind championship leader and reigning champion Max Verstappen at the summer break, a gap which does not reflect the minimal differences in pace between their Ferrari and Red Bull F1 cars.
Mistakes in pit-stop timing and tyre selection denied Leclerc potential wins at Monaco and Silverstone, and again most recently in Hungary where the choice to put Leclerc on hard tyres almost certainly cost him a crucial victory.
Binotto accepted the team could have done better but defending their decisions as “right at the time” and “unfortunate, not wrong”.
Speaking to Motorsport.com, Binotto said: “I think there is always a way to improve. You can’t be perfect and you never will be. I have no doubt we always need to take steps forward, we need to improve on aerodynamics, chassis, power unit, strategy and everything that can be improved. Having said that, I think I have a great team that takes care of strategy and I don’t think that’s a weakness.
“Races like Monaco, Silverstone or Paul Ricard have been judged on this front, but I don’t see the team as a problem because I think we have also made the right decisions. I’m not convinced what we did was wrong, I think we made what were the right decisions at the time they were made, and sometimes they turned out to be unfortunate, not wrong. And if we look at the work of our strategy team, sometimes they even did great things, better than the opponents.
“For example, in Austria we had the right strategy, unlike our opponents, just as we had probably the best strategy in France before Charles’ mistake. At Paul Ricard we had the courage to take two sets of medium tyres into the race, and to make a choice like that you have to be not only good but also brave. So, overall, we have a good team and I don’t think this is a weakness.
“We could start discussing, again, Monaco, Silverstone and Paul Ricard – from my point of view I think they were difficult decisions, maybe unfortunate but not always wrong. So I don’t think it’s our weakness at the moment.”
Speaking after the Hungarian Grand Prix, Binotto had said Ferrari needed to learn from the opening half of the season and move forwards.
“It’s not a matter of bad luck, and there is nothing to change as well,” Binotto said after the race in Budapest. “It’s always a matter of continuous learning and building, building experience, building skills.
“Today [Sunday], certainly there is something that you need to look at and understand why. But if I look again at the balance of the first half of the season, there is no reason why we should change. I think we simply need to address what was wrong today, we need to understand, and then to address and get back competitive at the 12 races so far [before Hungary] and the reason why it could not be the case at the next one.”
Ferrari are now 97 points behind Red Bull in the constructors’ championship – with Mercedes only 30 points behind in third – while Leclerc is 80 points behind drivers’ championship leader Verstappen.
“As a leader as he [Leclerc] is [key] to continue building, building for the team and building for himself step by step, and I think to look at each single race as an opportunity to win,” Binotto added.
“We are winning and losing altogether. Today it has not been a great one but I think there is still much potential and a lot of potential. We need to focus first to understand the reasons of today, address them, and come back even stronger.”
The season continues with the Belgian Grand Prix on 28 August.
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