Ferrari’s boffin boss Binotto feels the pressure as the struggling F1 team remain off the pace

Mattia Binotto, team principal of the bumbling Ferrari team, did not need to be told he is under big pressure. He said so himself Friday lunchtime.

It comes with the red uniform and poor results.

And while Binotto talked of the need to keep focus, sources in Italy indicated that the overlords who employ him are running out of patience.

Team principal Mattia Binotto remains calm but pressure builds around struggling Ferrari

For Ferrari come into the season’s third race totally off the pace. On Friday in morning practice, before rain rendered the second session times irrelevant, Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc were sixth and seventh fastest, 1.2sec and 1.4sec respectively off Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.

The immediate backdrop to the Ferrari malaise is the coming together of their cars in Austria last weekend. Both retired. Leclerc graciously accepted the blame for his reckless lunge.

The wider context is: no scarlet car has carried a driver to a championship since 2007, through Kimi Raikkonen. Hamilton’s six title triumphs have all come since those pterodactyl days.

Binotto, a 50-year-old who has spent half his life at the Scuderia, cuts a boffin-ish figure in his Harry Potter glasses. He was transposed from technical director to team principal for 2019, but does he possess the directness of a leader?

Ferrari were well of the pace again in Friday practice for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix

Of course, the Ferrari machines cannot suddenly become world-beaters, being woefully down on power since their controversial engine of last year was restricted by the FIA. But Binotto must demonstrate a new sense of direction in the next few races, or risk defenestration.

Already the name of a possible replacement, Antonello Coletta, head of Ferrari’s GT programme, has been aired. Another fine candidate, if the job were to come vacant, would be Englishman James Allison, who has worked with the Italians in two spells. He is now technical director at Mercedes. 

Asked about the unique demands at Maranello, he said: ‘Working at Ferrari is in many ways a joy. The country is so pro the team, the brand is so strong, and so is the history, that you feel you are part of something important. That is a real strength, but also the biggest burden when things are going poorly. Pressure is externally applied from the press in a much more intense way than on any other Formula One team.

‘It is internally applied from everyone who feels the duty to live up to the great performances of the past — and by a top-down leadership style that is more exaggerated than at other teams.

‘This tends to short-term decisions, instead of building fundamental strength. It is a mixture of these heavy highs and base lows which have at their root the same origin: for the Ferrari brand to be fighting at the front of the field.’ 

Those sentiments weighed on the boffin’s shoulders at lunchtime.