Even with Charles Leclerc's hard abandonment in France, Mattia Binotto said that the pace was very good and, therefore, he sees the possibility for the team to be victorious in the next stages
Ferrari had everything to emerge victorious from the French GP, only to once again come unstuck. On lap 18, Leclerc lost the rear end of his F1-75 at turn 11 and ended up on the tire wall, saying goodbye to the race in Paul Ricard. But what seemed at first to be more of a reliability problem was in fact a mistake, and the driver himself absolved the team of blame.
Now Max Verstappen has seven wins in 12 rounds. To Red Bull's all, that's eight. The Dutchman, in fact, has already opened a great advantage in the Drivers' World Championship: he is 63 points behind #16. However, the Italians' boss, Mattia Binotto, remains hopeful for the remaining championship races.
"At the end of the season we will see where we are, but I think the most important thing is to see that once again we had a good package, there is no reason why we shouldn't win 10 races from now until the end," Binotto said in an interview with De Telegraaf.
"I think that's the way to look at it positively and I like to be positive, staying optimistic. Could something happen with Max and Red Bull? I'm not counting on it, we need to focus on ourselves and do our best," he added.
While Charles dropped out, Carlos Sainz was trying to make up his recovery race, as he started from the back of the grid due to changing all the parts of his fourth engine. Although he managed to finish in fifth position, he was still victim of a Scuderia pit-stop screw-up, which earned him a 5s penalty.
The car proved to be very competitive, I think Charles' race also showed that. Charles got pole and was leading the race, and I think we had an advantage over Red Bull in terms of tire degradation on lap 15, and Max had to stop," he explained.
"We leave here with full confidence in our package, in the ability of our drivers, and in our speed," he closed.