The one good thing about the fact that this weekend's Italian Grand Prix will take place behind closed doors is that the various members of the Ferrari team will not be taunted by the tifosi as they enter and leave the paddock each day, though there are always the guaranteed bottlenecks at the various entrances to the Parco di Monza.

Unless there is the mother of all miracles, the Maranello outfit is in for a torrid time this weekend, and even more so at the following week's event at Mugello, at which the legendary team celebrates its 1000th Formula One World Championship start.

Sadly, team boss, Mattia Binotto admits that it will probably get worse before it gets better, and that returning the team to its former glory may take many years.

"The entire team is responsible, myself as team principal first," he admits. "Am I the right man or not, is not myself to answer," he added, referring to his role, which has been the subject of much speculation by the Italian media.

"How long it will take?" he continued. "I think if you look back in all the winning cycles that have been set, it's always many years," he warned, "there are no silver bullets in F1. Patience and stability is required.

"The engine is frozen this season, so there is nothing we can do on that," he admitted. "We are developing it for next season, and it is progressing well on the dyno at the moment.

"On the car there are some restrictions, so what's the plan for us? The main plan is focusing on the next seasons, not only 2021 but also certainly as well 2022. In order to do well in the next season we also need to try to understand the weaknesses of today and make sure that we are addressing them."

Despite the team's poor pace at Spa, which suggests the team will struggle again at power hungry Monza, Binotto believes the ban on engine modes to be introduced this weekend could work in his team's favour.

"It's a circuit where power performance is important, certainly where we are not the best," he said. "It may affect some of the teams. I will be curious to see how much, which team, I think it will be interesting in that respect.

"It's a circuit which has high power sensitivity, especially if it changes a bit the balance of competitiveness in the qualifying itself, and we know how important it is to start ahead, as when you are in traffic it is always more difficult as well to make the car work."

Looking at the bigger picture however, he admitted: "What is happening, in fact, is that we have a car that has lost power... just as all the engine manufacturers have lost it, but we more than the others.

"Last year the engine partly covered the limits of the machine, but this year it is no longer the case. The limits of the machine are emerging. On that point it is clear that we must improve."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by equator180, 05/09/2020 10:47

"What kind of a leader says to his team this is going to take many years? What kind of confidence and leadership does that exhibit. This guy is a joke, send him back to Harry Potter land and put a real leader with a brain in charge and they don't have to be Italian, probably shouldn't be Italian just to stir the mix a bit. Clean house and go down the line, no one individual should be protected, if there is a better person for their position they go.."

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2. Posted by aroutis, 02/09/2020 21:33

"The mere fact he claims other teams lost power when people can just check stats to understand that he lies, says it all.
Lies are not going to get him or Scuderia out of this pickle.
The more he fails to understand this the worse it is going to get as the tifosi are the most demanding fans and the pressure will only get worse. "

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3. Posted by Bill Hopgood, 02/09/2020 19:57

"@aroutis you are spot on regarding this to be a leadership issue.

All issues in businesses and teams eventually go back to leadership as the root cause.

One major problem I see is ownership of the issues at Ferrari and that has certainly not been helped by the FIA / Ferrari hidden agreement over what was going on with the PU last year.

There does not appear to be any public ownership of the fiasco of that situation therefore the same mistakes can be made with the same leadership team in place.

If the findings were made public and someone at Ferrari was identified as having made the call to put that team in breach of regulations (not that I'm saying that happened...) then changes to the leadership structure would have been pushed by the teams fans if not the FIA / World Motorsport Council.

What I'm confused about regarding this article is that Binitto states that all manufacturers have lost power but Ferrari more than the others?

I'm just wondering if Haas are on the way to Renault power next year as that team will have capacity that McLaren is currently taking up..."

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4. Posted by aroutis, 02/09/2020 14:53

"In order to solve a problem one needs to perform what is called a Root cause analysis (RCA for those that know).And it would be very interesting for Ferrari to perform an RCA for understanding how a team that ran like a clock even back in 2007, has now come to run like when it was running back in 1993. A complete roll back in very bad ways.
Binotto as a leader is responsible, as is Elkaan, in short the leadership is responsible.
Resources follow, for one can blame the engine, they can blame the tyres, they can blame everything,but Ferrari has a clear case of morale issue, one could see that in the pit wall unless they were blind.
Was that the tyres (as Binotto stupidly said) ?
Same tyres everyone use?
Yes, their engine is not to par as to what it should be in order to wear the Ferrari shield. Not even close to Mercedes or even to Honda or Renault. But hey, what about the aero?
And who is responsible for that?
Has Binotto heard anything about responsibility and / or accountability?
You know, management terms and he's supposed to be a manager.
Just stating that this can take years (why really, just because it did on other occasions? Are the situations the same? how does he support what he says?) is irresponsible at best.

In short, if Binotto cannot wear the role he asked for, he should step down and Ferrari should just find someone who can and is willing to do this job. "

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No "silver bullets" warns Binotto

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