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According to one former Ferrari driver, Mattia Binotto should have been replaced ‘several years ago’
Saturday marks the final day of Mattia Binotto’s tenure as the Team Principal at Ferrari. After four seasons as the Team Principal at Ferrari, Binotto’s tenure draws to a close at the end of the year, with Binotto having submitted his resignation back in November.
But according to one former Ferrari driver, that should have happened “several years ago.”
René Arnoux, who finished third in the Drivers’ Championship with Ferrari during the 1983 season, blasted the outgoing Team Principal in an interview this week. Speaking with Italian media outlet Gazzetta dello Sport, Arnoux called the mistakes made by Binotto during his tenure with the Scuderia “unforgivable.”
“I didn’t like seeing a very competitive Ferrari let the Championship slip away because we started well. It’s true that there was no reliability, but we lost some grands prix almost as if we had done it on purpose…
“I would have fired him several years ago, I’ve said it several times. Behaviour like his is intolerable when you are at the head of the most beautiful team in the world.”
The miscues during Binotto’s time with Ferrari are well-documented. This season alone, Ferrari began the year in solid form, as Arnoux states, but faded down the stretch. Instead of pushing Red Bull at the top of the Constructors’ standings at the end of the season, the Scuderia was fighting off a hard-charging Mercedes team for second place.
Ferrari managed to finish second, but it was not enough to save Binotto.
Miscues and failures from Ferrari have spawned a cottage industry of content creation — including a TikTok account from my dear friend Michael Kist dedicated to “Ferrari Disasterclasses” — but consider some of the gaffes this season. At the Monaco Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc’s home event, he and Carlos Sainz were running in first and second. But indecisiveness regarding tyre and pit strategy cost the team a shot at finishing atop the grid. Perhaps the best way to summarize the events of that day — where Ferrari could not decide between staying on the track on their wet, grooved tyres or switching back to slicks after just a few laps — comes through this moment. The team radioed to Leclerc to box, but as he was turning down pit lane, they told him to stay out.
Leclerc, understandably, lost his mind. (You might want to wait to watch this if kids are in the room or you are at work because, again, Leclerc loses his mind):
Then there was the Hungarian Grand Prix. Leclerc was leading the field, but Red Bull might have spooked Ferrari into another blunder. With 32 laps remaining, Red Bull brought Max Verstappen into the pits, to change into another set of medium tyres. Rather than bring in Sainz — who was running on older tyres than Leclerc — Ferrari gave Leclerc the order to box.
But Ferrari faced a decision regarding what tyre compound to use at that stage of the Grand Prix. Rather than put Leclerc back on the track with medium tyres, perhaps because Ferrari brought him in after just 17 laps on the mediums, they went in a different direction. Knowing that there was no way Leclerc would get to the finish on just one set of soft tyres, Ferrari decided to put the hard tyres on Leclerc’s car.
The problem? Ferrari had not even tried them in the Friday practice session. There were expectations that over time, as the track warmed up, hard tyres would find their grip. But if Ferrari looked to the track, they would have seen evidence from the Grand Prix itself that those expectations might not come to fruition. Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso of Alpine made a similar switch, and were struggling on the hard compound.
Still, Leclerc rolled out of the box on the hard tyres … and immediately began losing position on the track. He would come in later and change to soft tyres, but the damage was done, and he finished sixth.
Ferrari’s Leclerc questioned the decision after the race: “I made it clear that the medium I wanted to keep it as long as possible, but we pitted very early for the hard, which we need to understand why.”
Back to Arnoux, who has these and other failures to point to as evidence that Binotto should have been replaced years ago. “Last year the chassis and the engine were there, the reliability wasn’t. But above all we have made a mistake many, many, many times the strategy and in that field there is a good cleaning to be done. I’d say throw it all away. And find someone who’s capable.”
Arnoux also seems to criticize Binotto for trying to maintain a positive disposition, and the hope that better days would be ahead for Scuderia. “The mistakes he made for me in Formula 1 are unforgivable. I’ve never been on Binotto’s side. Someone who says ‘It will be better next year, it will be better next year’, doesn’t deserve that place.”
The head job at Ferrari has been described as one of F1’s toughest pressure cookers. Speaking on a recent episode of the Beyond the Grid podcast, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff talked about how difficult a job Binotto faced. “It was always clear that he was under tremendous pressure. Being a team principal at Ferrari, you better have a good contract for your exit…So certainly team principal of Ferrari [there is more pressure], probably as an Italian even more, because as a foreigner you just don’t read the news. But as an Italian, clearly you are in the firing line.”
This is the situation that Frédéric Vasseur steps into, as he takes over at Ferrari at the start of the year. There are hopes that his previous relationship with Leclerc will lead Ferrari back to the top.
But Vasseur might be wise to avoid talking about better days being ahead, for fear of angering Arnoux in the future.
