Ferrari priorities questioned by departing team boss

Ferrari - Mattia Binotto

Ferrari priorities questioned by departing team boss

Binotto will leave Ferrari at the end of the season after tendering his resignation

Sam Hall

Sunday 4 December 2022 09:30

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has questioned the team's priorities after budget constraints limited development across the past F1 season.

The Scuderia fell 205 points short of Red Bull in the constructors' championship after establishing an early lead with two wins from the first three races of the year.

As a result of Ferrari's failure to mount a concerted title challenge, Binotto tendered his resignation and will leave the team at the end of December.

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As the season progressed, Ferrari appeared to drop further away from Red Bull, leading the Italian to concede the team may have wrongly set its priorities.

Speaking before announcing his resignation, Binotto was asked why the team had been unable to match Red Bull in terms of development, to which he replied: "There have been a few factors.

"The first, in terms of development, Red Bull had a clear route which was the weight of the car, which was not our case, and they knew what to tackle to get performance out of the car itself.

"For us, it was more complicated because it was really through aero developments and the aero concept.

"The development we did was not sufficient. We stopped very early, not only by choice but for expenditure reasons.

"Have we made the right choice in stopping so early in terms of priority? I don't know."

Although Binotto will not be in charge for the 2023 season, he insisted: "Only '23 can tell us if that was the right choice or not.

"More than that, we could have done better development than we did, which we need to review.

"But the main reason is Red Bull got a clear path, which was weight reduction. That was more straightforward than extracting performance from the car itself."