Mattia Binotto: Ferrari shifted focus to 2023 car early in the season
- Heinrich Griessel
- 2 November 2022
Team principal Mattia Binotto says Ferrari switched their developmental focus from the current season to 2023 "quite early", but he doesn't think it's a problem.
Scuderia were not on pace with the likes of Red Bull and Mercedes at the Mexico City Grand Prix, and had to settle for fifth and sixth-place finishes for Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc respectively.
Binotto has explained that Ferrari are not overly concerned by the results this season as they made a conscious decision to put more work into 2023 instead.
"We know we stopped development on our car quite early, focussing on 2023 and somehow I'm not too... let me say concerned by the rate of development because I know when we stopped developing it," Binotto told the media.
"Certainly if I look at the last three races it has not always been great, but Singapore we were very competitive.
"The one after - Japan - yes it was very wet, we were not as fast as Max [Verstappen] but it was not a drama, certainly not in quali.
"Then in the States in Austin, again I think in the quali we were competitive then not as much as we expected in the race.
"Here [Mexico] I think it's a lot worse, so I don't think it's the same trend, Singapore competitive, Japan not too bad, USA good quali.
"So I think here it has been a lot more difficult and I'm hoping it's not a trend, just an [outlying] weekend for us."
