F1 News
Mattia Binotto: Championship was lost when Ferrari designed their car
- Bobby Vincent
Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto believes his team lost the world championship when making criticial design decisions involving their SF90 for the 2019 season.
Mercedes dominated the majority of the 2019 season, and in the end won by 235 points, with Ferrari in second-place. Scuderia had a spell after the summer break where their car looked like the most-dominant machine on the grid.
Pre-season testing ended with Ferrari looking like they had the quicker car and had high hopes when going into the opening race in Australia, but Mercedes ended up clinching a one-two in the season-opener, and in comfortable fashion.
"I think we lost this last year when designing the car," Binotto said to RaceFans. "Because at the end we were not competitive at the start of the season. And there are reasons for it.
"Our design was not as good as our main competitors. So, I think that's it. It has been an intense season. A lot to do. We restructured, reorganised the team. But I think in the meantime, we always tried to address and improve the car and we simply did it through the season at least on some level.
"And now the season's over, we are going onto the next one."