Mattia Binotto ‘thrown under the bus’ by Ferrari, says Damon Hill

Ex-Formula 1 driver Damon Hill believes former Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto was “thrown under the bus” by the team.

Binotto resigned from his position after the 2022 season following a disappointing campaign for the team. Ferrari started the season well with Charles Leclerc topping the drivers championship but mechanical failures and tactics meant the Scuderia came away with nothing.

Max Verstappen took the drivers’ crown and his Red Bull team claimed the constructors’ title.

But Hill - who won 22 races during his eight-season professional career and was world champion in 1996 - believes Binotto was the scapegoat for the team’s failings.

“I think that Mattia did a brilliant job and I think he’d been thrown under the bus a bit, frankly,” Hill told the F1 Nation podcast.

“But I think the reason he has gone, has been as much to do with… his real skill didn’t seem to me to be running a Formula 1 team in terms of the race strategy. You remember the conversation on the podium with Charles Leclerc, and stuff about the managing of the drivers and all that pit wall stuff? Really [that is] where Fred Vasseur [Ferrari’s new team principal] is really good.

“I think he’s good at looking at a race team and I think that, you know, Mattia Binotto, they’ve lost a real talent there back at the factory. I think he could have been could have been very effective.”

And Hill believes Ferrari could have been innovative by splitting the team principal role to include Binotto.

“I don’t know what went on in there to think that they could cope without him, but I think that they could have split the roles,” he added.

“I think they could have had Fred in there as running Ferrari’s operations at the racetrack, and kept Mattia in there as a team principal.”