Mattia Binotto, Ferrari Formula 1 team principal, applauded his teams’ impressive performance at the Monaco Grand Prix. Nonetheless, he was not under any illusion that it will keep dominating the Mercedes and Red Bull at other low speed tracks this year.
Ferrari catches the eyes at Barcelona, where it had the impressive performance through the third sector, which is usually slow. It showed a good sign for Ferrari to run a black horse at Monaco.
Scuderia exceeded its own expectations by setting the pace that other F1 teams could not manage. Charles Leclerc took the provisional pole, while he went on to crash during last seconds of Q3. It however prevented his team mate Carlos Sainz to achieve the similar position. He had to settle for fourth on the grid.
Leclerc’s failure to secure the car at the end of Q3 forced him to retire during the line-up before the race. Ferrari’s team decided to avoid penalty and ran Leclerc with the same car after repair. However, it turns out to be utter failure while Sainz was able to score the podium.
Sainz was runner up at Monaco GP behind Max Verstappen. He scored first podium for the Ferrari, the best result since last year season opener in Austria.
Ferrari is currently dominating the low-speed corners. It could help the team find itself on the podium again in Hungary and Singapore.
Binotto, however, seems more interested in just Hungary and Singapore. He wanted to exploit SF1000 on all type of circuits and looking forward to Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
“I think yes, there will be circuits with low-speed corners where we may be again competitive but it’s not a given,” Binotto said.
“Instead of thinking which circuit again will be competitive, I think we’re already focused on Baku which is the next one. And then we will be focused on the following, because there is still some room of exploiting better the car.
“I think that we showed we are well preparing the race weekend. We can at least exploit the best potential of the car itself. There will be some developments coming, not much, but they are still coming. And it’s important that they are working properly.”
