Ferrari has denied it will sack Mattia Binotto at the end of the year despite numerous reports in the Italian media that the team principal is set for the chopping block.
Both the prestigious Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy’s most widely read sports paper, and the Italian edition of Motorsport have reported Ferrari will call time on Binotto’s career after the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend.
The team released a short statement overnight describing the reports as being “totally without foundation”.
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But several other Italian outlets have since reported the team boss will be released from the team by 31 December.
Alfa Romeo team principal Frédéric Vasseur has been linked to Maranello’s top job.
Some outlets have further suggested Ferrari racing director Laurent Mekies will also leave the team, perhaps to take over Vasseur’s role at Hinwil. Iñaki Rueda’s job as head of strategy is also reportedly under threat.
Franco Nugnes
Binotto and his management team has been under increasing pressure through the year as Ferrari’s strong start to the season has petered out into a whimper.
The Scuderia led Red Bull Racing by 49 points in the constructors standings after three rounds, and Charles Leclerc had a commanding 46-point lead over Max Verstappen after as many races.
But a series of technical failures and strategy blunders have seen both titles lost by massive margins. Leclerc is now tied with Sergio Perez for second, and Ferrari clings to the runner-up position in the teams standings by just 19 points ahead of Mercedes.
At the Italian Grand Prix in September, Ferrari president John Elkann said that the board had “great faith” in Binotto but that he is “not satisfied, because I think we can always do better”.
The statement was interpreted by some F1 observers as an expression of the ‘full confidence of the board’ in the best traditions of European football — a thinly veiled warning to Binotto to lift his game.
Reports now suggest Ferrari’s patience has expired and Binotto will be shown the door in a matter of weeks.
THE ARGUMENT AGAINST BINOTTO
While Binotto deserves considerable credit for turning Ferrari around from a woeful sixth in the standings in 2020 to a race-winning force this year, the team has wilted in the heat of battle on his watch.
While the technical failures that have blighted the season were a calculate risk to get the most out of the engine before development was frozen this year, the regular strategy mistakes on the pit wall have been harder to excused and have cost the team considerably in terms of points and embarrassment.
His defence that Ferrari is actually a young team green to the rigorous of frontrunning competition are flimsy at best. Only around five years ago, in 2017 and 2018, it was challenging for the title with Sebastian Vettel, and it was winning races in 2019.
Auto Hebdo has reported the team’s continued poor execution has strained Binotto’s relationship with star driver Charles Leclerc, highlighting the blunder that cost the Monegasque the British Grand Prix as a key turning point inside the team.
Binotto was spotted remonstrating with a dejected Leclerc after the race. Though the team boss denied there was any conflict, a former Ferrari communications director wrote that there had been considerable tension inside the team after that race, with Leclerc’s mechanics initially refusing to attend the podium celebrations for Carlos Sainz’s first win.
Binotto was subsequently spotted having travelled to Monaco for dinner with Leclerc in what some described as clear-the-air talks.
But the situation would likely have been inflamed in Hungary, where Leclerc had an early race lead turned into a despondent sixth by poor strategy, after which Binotto insisted that no changes were required to the team’s organisation or structure.
Earlier that weekend the team boss had said there was “there is no reason why not to win 10 races from now to the end”. Ferrari hasn’t won a race since then and is in the midst of a 10-race dry spell dating back to July.
WHO IS FRÉDÉRIC VASSEUR?
Vasseur has been linked to a Ferrari move by several European publication, including Auto Hebdo in his native France.
If keeping Leclerc happy were the aim — and Elkann said in September that he considered the Monegasque was “in pole position” as team leader — Vasseur would be an ideal candidate.
Leclerc won his GP3 title for Vasseur’s ART team, and he made his debut for Alfa Romeo the year after Vasseur took the helm at Hinwil. Both are also francophones.
Auto Hebdo has reported that Vasseur had been on an earlier short list of team principal candidates during Sergio Marchionne’s reign as president of Ferrari because of his lifelong racing experience.
Ferrari’s principal during the Marchionne era was Maurizio Arrivabene, a former cigarette salesman for Philip Morris.
Binotto, a lifelong Ferrari engineer, was appointed to the top job in 2019 by current chairman John Elkann after Marchionne’s death.
But La Gazzetta dello Sport has reported that Vasseur’s name has continued to be kicked around the boardroom since then, and the Frenchman was sounded out as a possible alternative team boss last year as Binotto tried to rebuild Ferrari from one of its worst ever seasons in 2020.
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Also in Vasseur’s favour is that he has cultivated a strong relationship with top management of giant auto conglomerate Stellantis, according to La Gazzetta. Sauber title sponsor Alfa Romeo is part of the group of companies. Elkann also chairs Stellantis.
Vasseur has risen through the racing ranks with an engineering background, starting his own single-seater team partnering with Renault in the French Formula 3 series in the 1990s.
In the 2000s he formed ART Grand Prix with Nicolas Todt, son of then Ferrari team principal and later FIA president Jean Todt. The team powered Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Hulkenberg and Stoffel Vandoorne to GP2 championships, springboarding them into Formula 1.
In the 2010s he founded the engineering company Spark, which has supplied Formula E and Extreme E with chassis for the entirety of both series’ existence.
He then entered Formula 1 as the first team principal of Renault’s comeback in 2016 but fell out with managing director Cyril Abiteboul, who became de facto boss the following year.
Halfway through the 2017 season Vasseur landed at Sauber, where he replaced Monisha Kaltenborn in the top job, which he’s held ever since.
THE ARGUMENT TO KEEP BINOTTO
Binotto has been in the top job at Ferrari for less than four years, during which time he’s had to preside over significant upheaval.
At the end of 2019 the team was found to have operated too close to the boundaries of the rules with its power unit. It was forced to make technical changes that precipitated a deeply underwhelming 2020 campaign coinciding with severe curtails on development spending due to COVID.
Despite this, the team rebounded to third in the standings in 2021 and has won races again this year.
While Ferrari’s title challenge petered out rapidly, Binotto has defended the poor points return on the grounds that his team wasn’t targeting the championship this year and that its aim was only to return to competitiveness given the last two years.
Four wins, 15 other podiums, 12 pole positions and 524 point to date is a marked improvement on last year’s 323.5-point haul off the back of just five podiums.
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After significant internal turmoil predating his reign — Ferrari had churned through three team principals in five years before he was installed; Red Bull Racing and Mercedes have both enjoyed stability throughout — Binotto is also credited with reversing the crippling blame and fear culture that tends to inflict the de facto Italian national team.
This year’s inventive car, which was rapid early even if it’s proved more problematic lately, is a fruit of that culture.
Sacking him now, just as a new era dawns for the sport and the team, would risk the team devolving into its old ways.
Further, the idea that a team principal change might be instigated by a driver, even if indirectly, is unlikely to be a recipe for success.
Leo Turrini, long-time Ferrari observer and the first journalist to write that Binotto’s job was under threat this week, said that Leclerc would have to bear the weight of failure if the new team boss couldn’t succeed where the old one had been perceived to have failed.
“If behind this turnaround there is also the pressure of Charles Leclerc, this in my opinion is not great news, because great pressure will fall on the shoulders of the Monegasque because the Binotto lightning rod will no longer be there,” he told Italy’s Radio24.
Such a late management change — particularly if it’s wide-ranging beyond just Binotto — would deprive the current structure of the chance to redeem itself with the 2023 car, which by now is too far down the development road for any major changes to be made by new staff.
