Berger on Ferrari situation: 'They should have kept Binotto'

Former driver Gerhard Berger thinks Ferrari has done badly by showing Mattia Binotto the door. Since the beginning of this year, Frederic Vasseur has been in charge at the Italian team. He took over the role of team boss from Mattia Binotto. However, Berger thinks it would have been better for Ferrari to keep the Italian, albeit in a different role.

Berger on Vasseur's influence: 'Hard to say'

Gerhard Berger, himself a former Ferrari driver, makes his statements in the F1 Nation podcast. He does not have enormous praise for Vasseur and says he would have liked to have seen a different form of leadership at Ferrari. On Vasseur's influence, the Austrian is hard pressed to pass judgement:"Difficult to say, at the moment it’s up and down".

The current management form at Ferrari is not something Berger prefers. He says: "I always said I would have felt better if I had been Ferrari to have kept Binotto on the technical side and put Vasseur on the sporting side and tried to split some work and not put everything on one set of shoulders because it’s so complex today to have a successful Formula 1 team, difficult for one man to manage everything."

'Ferrari does not look as fast as in 2022'

Berger saw Ferrari coming off another strong start in 2022 and seemed to be a formidable rival to Red Bull Racing for the first few races of that season. Nevertheless, the Italian team fell back and continued that trend in 2023. The Austrian seems to link this to Binotto's departure:"But anyway, they chose it this way, and in some ways, you feel they are not as fast as they were last year. Maybe doing a little bit less mistakes, maybe not, I don’t know. But the outcome is quite similar and it’s not good enough to beat Red Bull."