Mattia Binotto reveals why Ferrari were forced to stop development ‘very early’

Ferrari managed to hold off Mercedes to take second place in the constructors’ championship, but they were a long way off Red Bull.

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has insisted in recent weeks that despite his team falling some way short of the constructors’ championship, he is happy with how the season has gone.

The Swiss claimed that Ferrari’s objectives were never to challenge for the title in 2022, and has refused to accept the season as a failure for the team.

The team faced late pressure to avoid the embarrassment of being overtaken by a struggling Mercedes team in the championship, but managed to hold on to their runner up spot with a strong end to the year in Abu Dhabi.

Despite these previous comments which suggest the Scuderia had somewhat of a successful season, Binotto has now changed his stance and addressed where his team did in fact go wrong.

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“I think there have been a few factors,” he suggested.

“The first I think that, in terms of development, Red Bull had a clear route, which was reducing the weight of the car. This was not our case.

“They knew what to tackle to get performance out of the car itself. For us it was more complicated because it was really though aero developments and trying to improve the car from the concept and the aero point of view.

“Also, I think if I look back, maybe the development we did was not certainly sufficient. We stopped very early; not only for a choice but because of expenditure reasons. But there are some things that we need to review.”

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Binotto has claimed that he is not worried about Mercedes resurgence towards the end of the season, suggesting that the only reason the Silver Arrows managed to close the gap was because Ferrari switched their attention to designing their 2023 car.

It has also been confirmed by the Ferrari team principal that the team were forced to tone down the power output of their engine to solve their reliability issues, explaining why their pace dropped towards the end of the season.

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“We had to lower the power slightly, we had to do it, reliability is the absolute priority,” he explained.

“That’s our top priority because in order to win you need to be reliable and that has not been the case in the season, as a balance of the season itself.”

Ferrari have released a statement to deny rumours that they plan to replace Binotto, however the fans are continuing to ramp up the pressure on the Swiss as they grow further frustrated with the Scuderia’s shortcomings.