Where it all went wrong for Mattia Binotto at Ferrari

02-12-2022 18:00 Last update: 02-12-2022 22:16
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Toby McLuskie

Mattia Binotto has officially left his role as Scuderia Ferrari Principal following the conclusion of the 2022 Formula One season, a year in which the Prancing Horses had the potential to win the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships but came up short in both.

The 53-year-old has decided to take the fall for Ferrari’s failures in 2022, announcing his decision to retire in late November. Binotto, who originally joined Ferrari’s engine department in 1995, climbed through the ranks at the Maranello outfit before eventually being made Team Principal in 2019.

Although Binotto helped the team massively to get back to the top in 2022 by overhauling Ferrari’s wind tunnel and approving their new racing simulator, the team ultimately failed under his leadership.

So, what went wrong for Binotto to leave his role as the head of Ferrari’s F1 team?

The Disaster of 2020

After an encouraging 2019 season that included back-to-back wins for Charles Leclerc at Spa-Francorchamps and Monza, 2020 was simply shocking.

While all the blame doesn’t lie at Binotto’s feet, the Italian was at fault for much of the car design, especially considering the power unit was his speciality during his time as an employee who developed the car, and that was the main issue of 2020.

Ferrari ended the season in sixth place in 2020 and while Binotto managed to eventually turn things around, he was fortunate to be given time and it seemed like he was always on thin ice after languishing in P6 in the Constructors’ Championship in 2020, and sources reported that when Ferrari CEO Louis Camilleri retired in December 2020, Binotto’s position as Team Principal was weakened.

The Reliability & Strategical Errors of 2022

After re-building the team in 2021 and taking them to 3rd place by beating McLaren, Ferrari were ready to fight back at the top again.

A 1-2 finish in the season opener at Bahrain highlighted that Ferrari was ready to win this year. In fact, after three races Leclerc scored 71 points from a possible 78 and held a 34-point lead over Max Verstappen.

Come the chequered flag at Abu Dhabi, and Verstappen ended the year with a winning margin of 146 points.

While Leclerc had moments of madness himself, like at the French Grand Prix, a huge reason why he could only muster a P2 finish in the championship was Ferrari’s mismanagement. 

At Monaco, Charles Leclerc qualified on pole at his home race and looked to have navigated the wet surface brilliantly before his hard work was undone by Ferrari’s strategy which ended up placing him back into the race in P4 after pit stops.

At Silverstone, Leclerc was yet again denied victory by his team’s strategy. Following a late safety car, Ferrari decided not to pit the Monegasque, despite having more than enough time to make the decision, and instead left him out on worn tyres. Everyone else behind him pitted for new rubber and unsurprisingly he dropped down the order to P4. 

Carlos Sainz was also harmed by Ferrari’s strategy decisions at the likes of the French Grand Prix.

Bearing in mind he was the Team Principal, Binotto ultimately had the final say on all strategy calls and Ferrari constantly picked the wrong one. 

Furthermore, Ferrari’s engine cost Leclerc and Sainz on multiple occasions in 2022, with a combination of reliability and strategy issues costing their chances of a first world title since 2007.

And just like in football when a manager gets sacked after poor performances, Binotto was the man responsible. Rumours began circulating that he would be sacked, but in the end, he decided to take action himself, stepping away from the job after four years in charge.

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