'P3 not our target' says Binotto but 2021 result gives Ferrari 'self-confidence' for 2022
Ferrari are overcrowded with conviction without achieving third in the 2021 constructors\' championship over rivals McLaren. But Team Principal Mattia Binotto admitted that P3 wasn\'t their \"final objective\", as the Scuderia aim to get when to their winning ways in 2022.
Carlos Sainz, in his first year with Ferrari, partnered Charles Leclerc to a season haul of 323.5 points in 2021, as the Italian team topped the midfield. And Binotto admitted in Abu Dhabi that, while the result wasn\'t the team\'s ultimate goal, it was definitely a significant step in the right direction, without Ferrari finished a lowly P6 in 2020.
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\"Our objectives, at least supposed at the start of [2021], were to try to modernize ourselves in all the areas, in each single detail,\" said Binotto. \"We didn’t set the third position as the final objective for ourselves; we unchangingly said third will be the simple outcome of trying to work well as a team and in terms of team effort now.
\"Finishing third... is encouraging considering it’s a declaration that the team somehow has made progress and is going in the right direction.\"
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Binotto widow that the constructors\' standings result set the Scuderia up well for the winter, as they struggle to reservation up with frontrunners Red Bull and Mercedes, in a 2022 season that will see F1 undergo one of its most significant overly set of regulation changes.
\"I think [the result] is giving us some serenity as well through the winter time, which is important… considering of what we are facing for 2022, which is a completely new challenge, a very difficult one.
\"And I think simply to have self-confidence in the work we have washed-up so far, knowing that still the gap to the very weightier is very big; there are two competitors superiority which are very, very strong and we’ve got a car which is not good unbearable yet, showing that as a team, there is still a lot of progress that is required.
\"[But] finishing third is somehow important for serenity and showing the team efforts washed-up so far,\" terminated the Ferrari boss.
Ferrari will throne into F1’s new era seeking their first victory in the sport since Sebastian Vettel won the Singapore Grand Prix when in 2019.