Binotto: “We cannot afford to make mistakes in the development”
The boss of Ferrari warns against the risks of a failed development of the single-seaters in a season where teams have no reference points. He also refuses the label of favorites attached to the cars of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
After the superb double podium of their two drivers during the season opener in Bahrain, Mattia Binotto reflected on the development that awaited these new race cars. For the Italian, the performance achieved on the Persian archipelago does not automatically make Scuderia the favorites.
« There is potential in the car, but we will need to develop it. When you have a good foundation and you develop it, you have to make sure that what you bring to the car is an improvement. This is even more important with the budget cap, we cannot afford any mistakes, warned Binotto, despite the promising displays shown during testing.
« We will only have a few opportunities for development and no matter what we do, we must be sure that they are the right things to do.
» Pressure is being put on Maranello to avoid any slackening among the engineers.
The boss of the Scuderia is also wary of the competition, especially Red Bull. « The others are very, very strong. In qualifying, it was just a matter of details. In the race, they could have been better but they had reliability issues or something that wasn’t perfect with their cars from what we understood. They would have been very fast without that. ».
Binotto once again dismissed the favorite label attached to the F1-75 since the winter tests and confirmed by the double win in Bahrain.
When I watch Max Verstappen’s first stint, on worn tires, he kept up with Charles Leclerc’s pace. I think we shouldn’t forget that they are the world champions, they are still the favorites and we just have to do our best. Jeddah (this Sunday) can be completely different and we will have to wait for four or five races to have a clearer idea of the hierarchy, analyzed Binotto.
