Ferrari “ashamed” F1 voted against tyre change to improve show

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto feels while Formula 1 enjoyed a better spectacle at the Austrian Grand Prix he is “really ashamed” the sport voted against changing the tyre specification as he saw it as “a great opportunity to somehow close up the field” to improve the racing show.

Prior to the Austrian Grand Prix, F1 teams held a vote on Friday morning over the Pirelli tyre specifications with Ferrari leading the push to revert to 2018’s thicker-tread compound construction over this season’s thinner compounds.

With a majority of seven out of 10 F1 teams needed to make the mid-season tyre change, the vote failed with a speculated five-five split between teams – with Ferrari-powered and Honda-powered teams voting for the change but Renault-powered and Mercedes-powered voting against and ultimately winning.

Binotto used his post-Austrian Grand Prix media debrief to demonstrate his point that F1 benefitted with an exciting race without one team outperforming the rest, a loosely-veiled point to Mercedes who struggled in the hotter temperatures at the Red Bull Ring, and felt changing the tyres could have helped for the remainder of the season.

“I think obviously it has been a good battle, normally you have good battles when you do not have a car which is overperforming,” Bintto said. “This weekend has been great in that respect. I think we missed a great opportunity this weekend on the tyres decision.

“I think the entire F1, we should have done something. I think sometimes we are discussing and not acting.

“I still feel really ashamed we didn’t change the specification of the tyres for the rest of the season as that would have been a great opportunity to somehow close up the field.”

Ferrari has struggled to find a comfortable operating window with the 2019 Pirelli tyres while it is considered a particular strength Mercedes has been able to exploit in its dominance of the current F1 campaign winning eight of the opening nine races.