In Ferrari’s traditional end-of-season media encounter, Mattia Binotto ‘s first impression is that he doesn’t want to delude himself. The team principal used the numbers as a basis to support his arguments and irrefutably brought out that the Scuderia has taken a good step forward compared to the difficult 2020.
The figures clearly corroborate growth on all fronts, but raise the question of where the ceiling is. As a good engineer, Binotto does not exceed his predictions and for 2022 he sets the goal of “winning as many races as possible”.
“Cycles are built on victories,” said Binotto. “When I say that next year we must be able to win races and present a competitive car, for me it means that we must confirm one more step in the direction that will lead us to what should be our ultimate goal. A season like this year would no longer be acceptable, for my part I would not accept it”.
Mattia Binotto, Ferrari team principal
“I have not lowered the bar. It is just a matter of agreeing on what our objective will be for 2022. We are on the eve of the entry into force of a totally new regulation, and neither we nor our rivals can know the level of the rest of the Grill”.
Ferrari sees risky to think of beating Mercedes and Red Bull
“Obviously, we assume that if Mercedes and Red Bull have been able to develop the cars that we have seen over the years, it means that they have tools, methodologies, calculations, simulations and other things that they have perfected over time. I think today It’s presumptuous to say that we’re going to beat Mercedes and Red Bull. The right thing to do is set ourselves the goal of wanting to play the game”.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF21
“How many races do we want to win? As many as possible, when I say that Ferrari must always aim for the best, it’s true, we don’t want to start the season with low expectations. What we will say internally is that we want to win as many races as possible.” .
From Binotto’s words it follows that Ferrari will have to break the drought of victories that has lasted since the Singapore Grand Prix in 2019, and make it not an occasional event, but frequent. Those from Maranello aspire to be back in the fight, but it is impossible to guarantee absolute results.
“You can’t talk about the championship being mandatory when you’re up against Mercedes and Red Bull,” Binotto clarified. “But it is important that Ferrari is back at a high level, that it competes for wins and pole positions. That is what we aim for.”
