“We made a lot of progress”– Ferrari believes they are third quickest on the grid

“We made a lot of progress”– Ferrari believes that it has the third quickest car on the grid after multiple positive results this year.

Ferrari is in its recovery season, as the setbacks of 2020 needed time to settle before they could finally wage its contention for the championship against Mercedes and Red Bull.

Now, four races into 2021, Ferrari believes they are making the right moves so far, with the Maranello based outfit believing that they currently are the third quickest team on the grid.

“Beyond expectations, I don’t know about that,” Binotto said. “We made a lot of progress and that’s good to see. The team have shown that they know they’re capable of addressing the weaknesses.”

“Last year, we were lapped at the end of the race and more than 1.5s off pole, so overall the team really addressed some of the weaknesses,” he added.

“It will take time to become even stronger, but I think that this team is great and is capable. So, beyond expectations I’m not sure is the right answer but I’m pretty pleased because at the end, I think it’s a great result from where we were last year.”

Not feeling it for the first time.

Binotto gave examples of previous races where he believes that his team brought in satisfactory results and claimed how his team also formed data to have better output in the future.

“I don’t think it’s the first time (being third quickest), I think that in Imola it was the case as well,” Binotto added. “Bahrain was very specific because of the overheating of the rears.”

“In Portimao, we made some mistakes with the overall tire management but I think that here (in Barcelona) at least we were focused on that aspect and we managed it well. It is good to see in the race we had the pace that we had.”

“Obviously, when you are struggling such as in Portimao, there is always a lesson learned and the car set-up, car balance, the way you manage tires on track.”

“So we made analysis from the data we had, discussing them with drivers, sharing with them the concerns and sharing with them the solutions. I think we reacted to put in place with our possible solutions coming here and I think we did pretty well.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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