“One person cannot fix or destroy an operation”: Former F1 driver finds Mattia Binotto’s Ferrari exit pointless


“One person cannot fix or destroy an operation”: Former F1 driver finds Mattia Binotto’s Ferrari exit pointless

Mattia Binotto has been non-commital over stay at Ferrari as team principal next year

Ferrari has recently announced that Mattia Binotto, their team principal, would be stepping down from his post following a disappointing season. Ferrari managed to mess up a brilliant start to the 2022 season and ended up finishing at a distant second place. The 2022 season was filled with strategy errors and pit stop errors that meant that Charles Leclerc could not hold on to his championship lead even after having a 63-point lead over Max Verstappen at a point in time. Even after winning two of the first three races of the season, Ferrari was eventually overtaken by Red Bull who went on to dominate the rest of the season.

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The 2023 F1 season will see Ferrari trying to challenge Red Bull once again for the World Championship, this time under new leadership. However, former Renault and McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen believes that the problem is more than just one individual. “It won’t be one person that can fix or destroy an operation.”, he said. “I was very surprised to see the news.

He explained that he thinks of Binotto as a very good leader. Kovalainen explained that Ferrari has been more steady and stable under the leadership of Mattia Binotto than it has been in the past. However, Formula 1 is a very tough place to be consistent. It is hard for a top team to stay at the top consistently for a long time. Currently, there is something missing from the team which leads to chaos and panic during moments of high tension during the weekends.

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Ferrari’s disappointing season cannot be blamed on Mattia Binotto

Mattia Binotto during a press conference at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix (IMAGO / PanoramiC)
Mattia Binotto during a press conference at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix (IMAGO / PanoramiC)

Ferrari has been the victim of many high profile mistakes throughout the 2022 seasons. Some of them include the Charles Leclerc crash at France and Imola, the strategy mistakes at Hungary or Monaco, or the numerous pit stop failures throughout the season.

Heikki Kovalainen has worked under a lot of top leaders like Ron Dennis and Flavio Briatore. According to him, the failures of a team are a matter of collective responsibility rather than the responsibility of one person. He explained that the Ferrari drivers haven’t really helped the team all the time. They have also put the team in doubt at times by questioning their decision making.

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On the contrary, in the case of teams like Mercedes, the race engineers have the power to stamp their authority if a driver questions their decision. For example, in Brazil, Lewis Hamilton was asked to pit. However, he questioned and asked if he really needed to pit. The team were very quick to assert that they wanted Lewis to pit and finally Hamilton did come in for the pit stop.

If it were Ferrari, Kovalainen believes that the team wouldn’t have been confident enough to stamp their authority on the players. And this is not the sole responsibility of Binotto, but a failure of the team as a whole.

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