«He stayed at Ferrari longer than I thought. And he will not come in Mercedes »-Corriere.it

“Mattia Binotto remained Ferrari team principal longer than I expected. And no, he won’t come in Mercedes ». T
oto Wolff, team principal and shareholder of the German team that dominated the last decade in Formula 1 with Lewis Hamilton before Max Verstappen’s one-two on Red Bull, he spoke on “Beyond the grid”, the official podcast of Formula 1.

Wolff spoke of the resignation of the team principal of the Maranello team which arrived in November and which will materialize starting from January. Looking at everything from the perspective of someone who knows that role very well. «It was always clear that (Binotto, ed) was under tremendous pressure. If you are a Ferrari team principal, you better have a good exit deal. Now, probably, an inevitable decision has been reached, but it resisted longer than I imagined ». And he doesn’t imagine a future for Binotto like that of many other engineers who have landed in Mercedes in recent years: starting with Aldo Costa (technical director of the Cavallino from 2008 to 2011 and at Mercedes until 2018), James Allison (technical director of Mercedes since 2017 after winning five world championships with Schumacher in Ferrari), the engineer Lorenzo Sassi.

“No, I think there have been too many disagreements between us (Wolff speaks of “broken porcelain”, ed) in the last two years for this to be possible», but he does not rule out the possibility that Binotto could work for other teams: «Mattia knows Formula 1 inside out and maybe he will find a role in another team». Current Alfa Romeo team principal Frederic Vasseur is currently in pole position to take over for Binotto, but in the past (before he joined Mercedes) Wolff confessed that he would have found the possibility of arriving at Maranello very attractive if he had been contacted by Ferrari. And he then explained what it means to be team principal of a team: «You have to be attentive to regulations, politics, commercial rights, opponents. All of us are practically locked up in the “cage” of the paddock. You have to be politically astutebecause you can also be a good manager at a sporting level and not understand anything of what is happening at a commercial level or outside the world of motorsport».