Binotto acknowledges Ferrari’s mistakes in Monaco
After a Monaco Grand Prix where Ferrari was outsmarted by Red Bull in terms of strategy, Mattia Binotto acknowledged the numerous mistakes made by his team.
In Monaco this weekend, the big loser is named Charles Leclerc. However, he was perfect from start to finish, from Friday morning to Sunday evening. The Monegasque had done everything to clinch his first victory on the streets he knows by heart. He ultimately finished fourth, due to two consecutive mistakes from Ferrari.
Mattia Binotto himself acknowledged that the Scuderia failed strategically this Sunday. Firstly, we must admit that if you lead the race and find yourself in fourth position, we may have done something wrong. Therefore, we definitely made mistakes in our judgement and our calls.
Binotto is trying to understand the process that led Ferrari to make a mistake. I think the first mistake was underestimating the pace of the intermediate tires and the gap we had with the other cars in terms of position on the track. The process, I believe, is still something we need to examine and we just had our briefing with the drivers, we reviewed everything, had discussions, tried to understand, but believe me, it was quite complicated. It was not obvious, but we certainly made a mistake.
And I think we made a mistake too because we should have called [Leclerc] earlier, at least one lap earlier, or if not, we should have just stayed on wet tires, I think taking the lead, and then maybe switch directly to slicks.
Unlike Barcelona two weeks ago, it wasn’t the mechanics that failed. The result is the same, but the way it happened obviously hurts Binotto even more. « What happened in Spain was a completely different story. Obviously, we had reliability issues while we were comfortably leading the race. Here, there were circumstances that made our lives harder, but we weren’t good at judging and deciding. »
The director of the Scuderia logically believes that learning from this kind of situation is very important. « I’m almost certain that this is a situation that will make us stronger. We are quite aware of it: being competitive is a fact; winning is another task and it’s another level of difficulty. And I think that as a team, we are always progressing, learning, and maybe it will take more time. »
Ferrari is now 36 points behind Red Bull in the constructors’ standings. Charles Leclerc is six points behind Max Verstappen after conceding three in Monaco, in a weekend where he could – and should – have easily taken the lead in the championship.
