“I would wait for four or five races” Ferrari’s team Principal Mattia Binotto skeptical of team’s chances after Bahrain’s triumph

Ferrari’s team Principal Mattia Binotto after the crazy Bahrain Grand Prix of the 2022 season has indicated that even after finishing 1-2, they are still not considering themselves as a team in the running for the world title.

Mattia believes that the team needs “at least four or five races” to make a good enough assessment of their prospects during the 2022 F1 season.

The first race of the 2022 season had everything in abundance, from close wheel-to-wheel racing to unprecedented events, the Bahrain Grand Prix was one for the ages and after all the scuffle the Ferrari outfit has got the bragging rights over the other teams.

After yesterday’s mega victory, Ferrari has taken the lead in both the championships and the last time the team was able to do this was in 2018. Charles Leclerc on the other hand has gone top of the driver standings for the first time in his F1 career.

The Ferrari team is not letting the success of yesterday get to their heads and they still believe that the Red Bull team is the favorite for the title and they need a few more races to make an astute judgment about their chances.

“I think that the others are very, very strong,” said Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto when asked by The Race if he felt Ferrari’s team and drivers are ready to mount a championship challenge.”

“They have proved to be very strong yesterday in qualifying. It was really a matter of details.”

“I think today it could have been so good, but maybe they had some reliability issues or something that is not perfect on their car for what we may understand from the radio communications. And they would have been very fast otherwise.”

“And if I look at the first stint of Max, on used tyres, he was keeping the pace of Charles.”

“So I think we should not forget this was one of the world champions. They are still the favorites.”

“What we can try to do is to do our best. Jeddah in a week’s time can be a completely different picture and I think we need to wait for at least four or five races before to assess.”

“To answer your question, I would wait for four or five races.”

Solid first race for the Ferrari F1 team

The Maranello-based Italian team started the Bahrain Grand Prix in pole position with Charles and were able to finish in the starting position after going through a back and forth ‘tussle’ between Leclerc and Verstappen.

Midway during the race, Max Verstappen was able to get ahead of Charles but the Monogesque was immediately able to get the lead back with the help of the undercut. The duo went at each other’s throats ‘thrice‘ during the race but Charles had an answer to Verstappen’s exploits of every occasion.

Red Bull went for a three-stop strategy in order to get the win but the Ferrari team did not respond immediately with a pit stop of their own because the team was confident in Leclerc.

However, Pierre Gasly’s late DNF gave the blood-red team the opportunity to get Leclerc a free pit stop.

while talking about the final few moments of the race, Binotto said, “We didn’t cover because we saw that we had enough margin to consolidate the position.”

“He was managing the tyres well, the medium was working well. And we saw that an extra pitstop would have been an extra risk.”

“Certainly, we will discuss with the team whether that was the right decision or not. But we were comfortably ahead and that’s why we decided to stay out.”

Ferrari after yesterday’s strong performance has sent out a notice to all the other teams as to what they have to look forward to, and if teams like Red Bull and Mercedes are to catch the Italian team then they would have to start putting in good performances from Jeddah onwards.

The races are now going to come thick and fast for all the 10 teams and it is going to come down to who wants the title most. Ferrari is in a good spot and it will be fascinating to see how the other teams are going to respond to Ferrari’s challenge in Jeddah.

Also Read: “We could not have hoped for better,” Charles Leclerc reacts after claiming Bahrain GP victory