Formula 1: How the porcelain of Wolff’s relationship with Binotto broke

Mattia Binotto tendered his resignation from Ferrari’s race directorate at the end of November as he felt he did not have the full backing and support of the Italian company’s management on the various allegations leveled against him in the 2022 F1 season had the best omens for the Scuderia and in the end the worst.

Mattia Binotto has spent his entire Formula 1 career with Ferrari since 1995. He was born in Modena, from the University of Enzio Ferrari to the race management of the Scuderia. But by the end of 2022 he felt the bond of trust he had with Ferrari President John Elkann and with CEO Benedetto Vigna had broken down.

Since the official announcement of his retirement, Binotto’s name has been heard by several Formula 1 teams, thanks not only to the Italian’s success in making Scuderia the protagonist of F1 again this year after 15 years, but also to the expertise of the engines – before the new sports engines in 2026.

Rumors of his next stop include Audi, which will enter F1 with its own engine in 2026 and has already held talks with Binotto, Alpine and Mercedes. In recent years, leading mechanical engineers and aerodynamicists such as Aldo Costa and James Allison have found their new home after Ferrari.

But Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff put an end to these Binotto rumors saying: “I think a lot of china has been broken between us in recent years to make something like this possible. I can’t say anything about the other teams”emphasized the Austrian.

And he continued: “Certainly Matias understands Formula 1 and knows it inside and out and he could find a role in a team – there are many that could be targets. Mattia and I have had our moments, it’s no secret after all these years, but in 2022 there was a reconciliation.

“We’re in a much better place but it was always clear he was under unbearable pressure. If you’re a Ferrari manager, it’s best to have a good contract ready for your departure. The inevitable has probably happened, although it stayed in place longer than I expected.”

The “breaking of the china” that Wolff referred to happened at the end of the last decade – and was quickly forgotten as the Italian team’s performance in 2020 was downplayed. The core of the problem lies in the second half of the 2019 season.

Up until that year Mercedes had dominated with relative ease, but after the summer Ferrari was unrecognizable, winning six straight pole positions and Charles Leclerc fought hard for Mercedes to win at Monza.

This Scuderia conversion didn’t last long, however, for more and more rumors to surface about the legitimacy of the Italian team’s engine. The FIA ​​began to suspect that Ferrari might be breaching regulations related to fuel flow or engine oil combustion, or both, and began their investigation.

Months later, then-President Jean Todt’s FIA officially announced that it could not prove any concrete conclusions, but also that it had reached a private settlement with Ferrari – a settlement that was never made public.

All of this happened in the first year of Mattia Binotto’s management of the Scuderia, who had just been succeeded by Maurizio Arrivabene, and naturally upset Toto Wolff. Binotto was the focus of the Austrian’s irritation, an irritation the Mercedes manager was unable to hide in several interviews with the press.

It had to do with the workers at Mercedes High Performance Powertrains in Brixworth, UK having to be pushed to their limits to enable the team to compete with Ferrari’s engines, while quite a few associate the hustle and bustle of this stressful period with the departure of the brilliant Mercedes HPP director Andy Cowell from Brixworth;

Meanwhile, going back to the FIA-Ferrari compromise, the FIA ​​imposed a ​​technical directive for 2020 that focused on the Scuderia’s ‘suspicious’ engine specifications, and Ferrari crashed completely thereafter, ending 2020 in 6th place in the constructor rating.

At the beginning of 2021, Wolff explained that “Some have lost my respect forever in recent years”and based on the events of 2019 with Ferrari, Binotto was likely among them – little as their relationship may have improved in 2022 given there has been no head-to-head competition between the two teams for the past three years.

Photo credit: Associated Press