Another difficult weekend for Vettel at the Portuguese Grand Prix left the German at a loss to explain why he is so far off the pace compared to his teammate.
Vettel’s comments have been interpreted by some as an indication that Ferrari may not drive their cars to the same specification for both drivers.
But Binotto went out of his way to shut down the conspiracy theorists when he made it clear that Vettel should improve his game so the team can make the progress it needs in the constructors’ championship order.
“Seb and Charles’ cars are undoubtedly identical,” he told Sky Italia. “I sincerely hope that Sebastian can qualify better at Imola and show more of what he can do during the race.
“Charles is certainly very good, but you might expect more from the second driver.”
Also read:
Ferrari is currently sixth in the constructors’ championship, but since he’s 33 points behind Racing Point in the battle for third place, he needs both drivers to have any hope of that spot.
Vettel expressed growing frustration with the struggles he faced at Ferrari and lacked the confidence to push the SF1000 as hard as Leclerc did.
When Vettel spoke to RTL after the Algarve race, he was pretty cryptic about why he believed he was behind Leclerc on a day when he was at least able to score the points.
“On the one hand, I’m satisfied because I had the feeling that I had driven a good race,” he said. “I had a hard time at the beginning, lost positions and lost the car almost two or three times. After that, I actually drove a good race.
“But then again it’s obvious that the other car is much faster. Where am I losing time? I’ve bitten my tongue all year. An idiot could never figure it out, but am I a complete idiot? I doubt it.
“At some point you should be lucky and reach the limit. I’ve never reached it, and if I do, then only with great difficulty. On the other hand [of the garage] it looks a lot easier.
“I have to look at myself and do my thing, but of course it hurts. Mainly because my own expectations are higher than expectations from outside.
“I don’t really care about all the excitement. But it’s obviously difficult for me in the car to process because I’m too ambitious and too hungry for more.”
Additional reporting by Giacomo Rauli and Maria Reyer
The post Ferrari junk speaks of F1 cars not being the same first appeared on monter-une-startup.
