Former Ferrari engineers reflect on Mattia Binotto’s era of leadership at Maranello. Former Ferrari engineers reflect on Mattia Binotto's era of leadership at Maranello.

Speaking for the F1Sport Pit Talk Podcast, former Scuderia Ferrari engineers Luca Baldisserri and Luigi Mazzola, who were both a part of the Maranello team’s golden Michael Schumacher era, discussed the difficult moment Ferrari is going through, despite the improvements made since the 2020 Formula 1 season.

The Pit Talk host begins with a hard truth about the Scuderia Ferrari team right now: “We are almost used to the slow pace of the Reds, to the point that the poor performance is no longer news.”

During the Austrian Grand Prix weekend, Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto admitted that finishing third in this year’s Formula 1 World Championship, as the Italian side is fighting McLaren for a spot behind Red Bull and McLaren, is not a high priority for his team. The Pit Talk host continued: “Making news and startling Tifosi was the declaration by Mattia Binotto through that third place is not important. A goal which, at the beginning of the season, Binotto himself repeated like a mantra. In short, something is not right, and even the most loyal Tifosi are starting to doubt.”

Former Ferrari engineers Luca Baldisserri and Luigi Mazzola agreed and came to the same conclusion: “There is no accountability at Ferrari, no one to crack the whip and put on the pressure.”

Luca Baldisserri added: “There was a time at Ferrari we had a round table meeting on Mondays to discuss the positives and negatives of a race weekend. We would analyse the problems and then measures were taken to resolve the various issues. Whether they were reliability or performance problems, the various elements were addressed to the departments or to individuals to solve situations and make changes to the car, or to the procedures, to prevent it from happening again. When we saw an extra chair around that table it meant that Luca di Montezemolo would be present. And that wasn’t a good sign,” recalled Luca Baldisserri.

Luigi Mazzola added to the picture: “There was a chair, a pencil, a glass and a notepad. Today I don’t think all this happens from what I can hear and perceive. The exact problem is the lack of a dominant figure like Montezemolo, a charismatic leader and a Ferrari man through and through since 1970. Then with him, you had a [Jean] Todt and a [Ross] Brawn talking to each other, there was a situation of competence under pressure because the goal was to win and nothing else.” – he continued.

After Baldisserri and Mazzola reminisced, the Pit Talk show host concluded: “Listening to these words it is not difficult to understand what Ferrari is missing today, it is there for all to see: Who’s in charge?”