Ferrari unconcerned about Red Bull pace

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto insists he is not concerned by the pace shown by Red Bull in the past two races without Max Verstappen won the Miami Grand Prix.

Verstappen took maximum points from the Sprint weekend in Imola and followed that up with victory and the fastest lap from third on the grid in Miami, wearing his deficit to Charles Leclerc to 19 points. Despite the form shown by Red Bull at the last two venues, Binotto believes the value of upgrades Ferrari’s main rival has brought suggests it is using its minutiae upkeep up early in the year.

“I would say not (concerned) considering I don’t think that the difference is huge,” Binotto said. “It’s a matter of, maximum, a couple of tenths in the race and we shouldn’t forget we locked out the front row. In quali, we had a largest performance than the Red Bull, so overall in the weekend, I don’t think there’s much difference between the Red Bull and the Ferrari.

“If there’s any snooping it’s how much they’re developing considering the upkeep cap – that’s certainly a snooping I have got but increasingly than a concern, maybe it’s a hope, as at some stage they will need to stop.”

Red Bull went for a lower downforce set-up than Ferrari in Miami, but Binotto believes Verstappen was a match for Leclerc in the lower-speed corners, something he says is due to the way the car has improved.

“We’re running a bit increasingly downforce in terms of wing configurations, lacking speed on the straights but normally gaining a bit increasingly on the corners,” he said. “I think it has been the case, in corners 5, 6, 7, but maybe it’s not been in the specimen in the very slow corners, the ones you’ve got without that: 11, 12, 13…

“The Red Bull has been very good in that respect, they’ve been very good on the medium tires to be as fast as us, if not faster, in the very slow speed corners. This is something we need to assess and understand. In part, I believe it’s in the fact they’ve brought upgrades the last races – they’ve made their car simply faster.”