Ferrari’s management chaos a contrast to calm 2023 F1 car progress

The decision by team principal Mattia Binotto to resign after the disappointments of the 2022 campaign has left the squad facing a more difficult winter than anticipated.

For whatever the qualities that Binotto’s likely successor Fred Vasseur will bring with him, it is going to take time for him to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation to work out where change is needed.

And amid F1’s cost cap era, making the wrong call on big decisions early in the campaign is something that can have big consequences for the long term.

But while questions remain about whether or not Ferrari has done the right thing in letting Binotto go, on the factory floor the focus is very much business as usual in pulling its 2023 F1 car together.

And for now, quite crucially, the team still retains the key technical input of Binotto, who remains under contract and working hard at Maranello until the end of the year.

The message from Charles Leclerc at last weekend’s FIA Prize Gala in Bologna was very much one of the technical part of the team not getting distracted by the bigger infrastructure issues at the top of the organisation.

“I am confident because we are doing quite a lot of work at the simulator,” he said about the progress of the 2023 car.

“We’ve been working extremely hard in the past year to try and understand what were the weaknesses of this car in order to get better for next year’s car.

“Obviously, there’s also Mattia still at the factory at the moment, working and trying to help the team to get ready for 2023. And again, I believe that if the transition is done in the right way, we shouldn’t suffer too much.

“I also think that after the 2021 season where we’ve been working very well and reset it a little bit from 2020, that was a difficult season, we have been working in the right direction and in the right way. And this gives me the confidence that we’ll have a competitive car for 2023.”

There certainly appears to be more confidence inside Ferrari than outside at the moment, and that is something that has not always been historically true.

And while changes will no doubt come when Vasseur has had time to get his feet under the desk, it does not appear that Ferrari is in need of a major revolution or upheaval. Minor adjustments in the way things are run could be enough to make the difference in that fight with Red Bull and…