Ferrari: Binotto never mentioned about the team quitting F1

Ferrari has reacted to stories on comments from team principal Mattia Binotto and says it remains committed to Formula 1.

In an interview with The Guardian Binotto said Ferrari “would not want to be put in a position of having to look at other further options for deploying our racing DNA” if the F1 team cost cap is lowered further from the projected $175 million per season.

The F1 cost cap has become a sticking point between teams, with McLaren leading calls to lower the team budgets to $100m in the wake of the coronavirus crisis and truncated 2020 F1 season, while Ferrari has fought against the move and suggested a two-tier cost cap system to allow greater financial scope for teams which produce customer parts.

Ferrari has clarified the “deploying our racing DNA” comment and says it doesn’t refer to an F1 quit threat.

“We would like to clarify what Mattia said in his interview with published yesterday night,” a Ferrari statement read.

“He never mentioned about Scuderia Ferrari quitting F1, on the contrary, he said that we would not want to be put in a position of having to look at further options, besides continuing racing in F1, for deploying our racing DNA, in case the budget cap would be even more drastically reduced, putting at risk hundreds of workplaces.

“The misunderstanding was raised by the misleading headline of the article which was published at first and was immediately corrected.”

Within the piece, Binotto also offered another solution for F1, where teams with bigger manufacturing capabilities like Ferrari and Mercedes supply customer cars to smaller teams, at least in the short term, following the model used in MotoGP.

MotoGP manufacturers run their own factory teams and can also supply bikes to customer satellite teams, with levels of support depending on agreements between the satellite team and the factory.

“If the current emergency really put the existence of some of our competitors in this sport in doubt and made it necessary to revise certain cornerstones, then Ferrari would be open to it,” Binotto said. “It’s not even sacrilegious, given it’s happened before in F1 and happens today in series such as MotoGP.”

It is believed the idea hasn’t been formally put forward in the F1 meetings yet between F1’s management, the FIA and the teams.