Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto revealed that he was eager to forget the 2021 season despite the Scuderia finishing third.
Ferrari buried the ghosts of 2020 and took P3 ahead of a stubborn McLaren. It was a significant leap forward for the illustrious team, and one that revealed their intentions to sit at the top.
However, the gap between the midfield toppers and the top teams in Mercedes and Red Bull is still fairly large. Throughout 2021, there were very few moments when the Prancing Horse went toe-to-toe with those teams’ cars and actually came out on top.
As a result, despite the positive development and result, Binotto revealed that he was eager to forget the 2021 season.
“Our objectives, at least declared at the start of (2021), were to try to improve ourselves in all the areas, in each single detail,” the Italian told F1’s official website.
“We didn’t set the third position as the final objective for ourselves; we always said third will be the simple outcome of trying to work well as a team and in terms of team effort now.
“Finishing third is encouraging because it’s a declaration that the team somehow has made progress and is going in the right direction.”
Aim for the sky
“I think (the result) is giving us some serenity as well through the winter time, which is important because of what we are facing for 2022, which is a completely new challenge, a very difficult one,” he continued.
“And I think simply to have self-confidence in the work we have done so far, knowing that still the gap to the very best is very big; there are two competitors ahead which are very, very strong and we’ve got a car which is not good enough yet, showing that as a team, there is still a lot of progress that is required.
“(But) finishing third is somehow important for serenity and showing the team efforts done so far.”
Read more: Binotto upset with Leclerc finishing seventh – “He missed out on at least 40 points”