Mattia Binotto reckoned the 2019 battle against Mercedes was lost in 2018, as the car design was not decent enough to start the season on the right foot.

The Ferrari team principal spoke frankly at the end of the Abu Dhabi GP and came clean about the SF90 true potential. As disheartening as it gets, Binotto admitted that Ferrari missed out on the initial stages of the season as for accurate and proper car development. 

“We lost the battle to Mercedes when designing that car last year, because we were not competitive at the start of the season. There are reasons for it, it was a car project that was not good to start with”.

Binotto reiterated that the development has been measured and ongoing despite the fact that Ferrari was also involved in a restructuring process with new members coming.

However, the overall assessment of 2019 has not been positive for Ferrari, as there are numerous factors to reconsider, including the management of the relationship of its two drivers.

“It’s been an intense season, we even restructured and reorganized the team, but in the meantime we always tried to address and improve the car and I think we did it throughout the season, at some level”.