Photo: Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool
Despite a winning start in Bahrain, Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto still believes that Red Bull are the favorites to win the 2022 Formula 1 World Championship. Furthermore, Binotto stated that it would take “four or five” races in order to assess whether the Scuderia can truly compete for the title.
It could be that Binotto is just being cautious, seen as how Red Bull have looked just as strong as Ferrari during preseason testing and they employ the reigning F1 world champion in Max Verstappen.
Still, the Italian outfit got off to an amazing start this season, with Charles Leclerc converting pole position into his third career win at Sakhir, while his teammate Carlos Sainz took second place after Verstappen was forced to retire his car.
“I think that the others are very, very strong,” said Binotto. “They [Red Bull] have proved to be strong in qualifying. It was really a matter of details.”
“I think [on Sunday] it could have been so good, but maybe they had some reliability issues or something that is not perfect on their car for what we may understand from the radio communications. And they would have been very fast otherwise.”
He goes on to add that after looking at Verstappen’s first stint (on used tires), he saw that the Dutchman was “keeping the pace of Charles so I think we should not forget this was one of the world champions. They are still favorites.”
Up next on the calendar is Jeddah, which is a completely different track compared to Bahrain, hence Binotto’s strategy to wait “at least four or five races” before assessing where they are compared to every other team.
The 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is scheduled to take place this upcoming weekend, on Sunday, March 27. Afterwards, we’ll take a one-week break before racing in Australia on April 10.
Still, the Italian outfit got off to an amazing start this season, with Charles Leclerc converting pole position into his third career win at Sakhir, while his teammate Carlos Sainz took second place after Verstappen was forced to retire his car.
“I think that the others are very, very strong,” said Binotto. “They [Red Bull] have proved to be strong in qualifying. It was really a matter of details.”
“I think [on Sunday] it could have been so good, but maybe they had some reliability issues or something that is not perfect on their car for what we may understand from the radio communications. And they would have been very fast otherwise.”
He goes on to add that after looking at Verstappen’s first stint (on used tires), he saw that the Dutchman was “keeping the pace of Charles so I think we should not forget this was one of the world champions. They are still favorites.”
Up next on the calendar is Jeddah, which is a completely different track compared to Bahrain, hence Binotto’s strategy to wait “at least four or five races” before assessing where they are compared to every other team.
The 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is scheduled to take place this upcoming weekend, on Sunday, March 27. Afterwards, we’ll take a one-week break before racing in Australia on April 10.
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