#also I hate the FIA because what tHE HELL WITH CARLOS' PENALTY?!?!

[maraguanabana]

okaaaaay so. I haven't done a race report in weeks. let's go

it's literally 3 am in my country (Latam arise), the race finished at 2 am and that thing left me shaking. for real.

Charles deserved the win, and you can argue with the wall thank you. that was a brilliant drive (Ferrari's Pit Stops/Strategies: I despise you. Safety Car: I knew I disliked you after Abu Dhabi 2021, but you have decided to take my displeasure and hatred to the next level. so it'll be that then)

Still, Max did a good job. I guess. (I just don't want to come to therms to the fact that he has reached Seb's wins. let me grieve it please and thank you. I know Max was as great as always. I just need a second. or a whole week)

Congrats to Checo on being P2 in the Drivers Championship (this is out of pure obligation because I do not like that man, and I wanted Lewis to get that runner-up. sorry not sorry)

and, I swear here and now, that I fucking hate Las Vegas. WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU MAKE A RACE AT 12 AM. WHY. it's 10 pm on Nevada bUT STILL THAT'S A SHITTY TIME.

also my fav thing of this weird ass weekend is that Max quite literally said Fuck you Las Vegas and PR went 'you're gruounded young man' and got him an Elvis race suit. that, that was hilarious

alongside whatever the fuck was going there. jesus. I fully expect a communiqué tomorrow that some drivers decided to recreate Hangover but make it F1 version (btw I'm loving the fanfics. please keep them going) I'm psychologically prepared to read a PR release that Max and Charles decided to marry each other and that Pierre and Yuki got re-married (joking)

and yeah that's it. it was good if you ignore the fact that it could've been Ferrari's second win this season if it was not for Ferrari's luck.

PD. actually shattered for my Danny Boy. I really wanted him to have a great result here. It is, after all his dreamed track.

PD2. WHAT THE JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WAS THE START AND TURN 1. like. what. TWO SC. ONE VSC. AND A THOUSAND YELLOW FLAGS? I guess that was happens in Las Vegas does not stays in Las Vegas anymore. welcome to the social media era. tadaaaa

[dhufflebee]

I'm new! whose binotto? How long he was there? What he do to Char?

hi! welcome :) and thanks for the vote of confidence, i'm not sure i'm the best person for the job since i've really gotten back into f1 a couple years ago, but i'll do my best.

i suggest you also do a deep dive into @leqclerc's blog, starting with these 3 posts ( x - x - x ).

mattia binotto was, for better or for worse, a key figure in ferrari up until the end of 2022, when he was let go/fired. he had worked for ferrari as a PU engineer since the schumacher times (not sure about what year he started), and climbed the ranks until he became technical director. due to internal politics - a problem that affects ferrari seemingly endemically - and his own inflated ego, in 2019 he all but forced the scuderia to hand him the role of team principal alongside being TD... and that was an atrociously bad decision, but you know what they say about hindsight.

2019 was the first year for charles leclerc in the team (but let's not forget he had been signed by the previous tp/management) alongside seb vettel; the year wasn't particularly good as a whole, but the car was developed well and the team got 3 wins back to back after summer (including monza with charles, which is A Big Deal). only problem is, in the winter break it came out that ferrari had signed some sort of pact/agreement/whatever with the fia, because apparently the engine had been a bit too much focused on exploiting grey areas of the regulations - both engine and accord being directly linked to binotto in his double role.

so to "protect" this engine project (still to this day nobody knows much about it except that it wasn't outright and wholly illegal), binotto decided not to get penalties & fines like any other team would; instead ferrari was forced by the fia to develop a new, power-limited engine who completely crippled the team in 2020 (and also 2021). the car was horrible to drive, results would not come - seb's and most especially charles's efforts notwithstanding - and internal politics were still rampant. to add fuel to the fire, italian media started a smear campaign against seb, which resulted in him being let go in 2020. a media campaign that started mainly because of results, but binotto's absurd and backwards communication style didn't help, with his tendency to not support, lie to and baby his drivers in statements and team radios.

2021 was a transitory year, last of the regulations - car was slightly better but still bad, nobody was thinking about ferrari much given the wdc fight. only noteworthy thing (and again: hindsight) was that carlos sainz joined ferrari, a driver coveted and handpicked by binotto himself.

2022 was when it all came to a head. new regs were established and apparently ferrari had the best car of them all: the first races were quite the sweep with charles seemingly poised to become wdc with the way he was dominating. except, engine reliability was an issue (not disastrous but charles did lose some wins because of that) and worst of all, the team and the wdc campaign under binotto were handled in the most shitty and maliciously bad way you can imagine. important tidbit: in the beginning, carlos was struggling in the car while charles soared, and it's clear now that binotto hated that and worked like hell to favour the driver he chose. meaning the strategies were amateurish, with wins and podiums lost - usually by charles - due to absurd decisions from the pitwall (wrong tyre choices, driver's suggestions getting blatantly ignored, pit stop fumbles like in monaco, charles constantly getting sacrificed because "he could recover", etc). absolute worst of the worst, ferrari robbed charles at gunpoint in silverstone, a race he was comfortably leading and going to win, until they chose to not pit him and to leave him out on old tyres to be overtaken, handing carlos the victory and kicking charles off the poium entirely. to make matters even worse, binotto wagged his finger in charles's face telling him he had to stay put and enjoy (maybe you've seen pictures, it was the single most enarging moment in a wholly enraging weekend).

that race was really the beginning of the end. i cannot let you understand the amount of hate the scuderia got for that result, from fans (especially charles's) but also from media and other teams who were all absolutely baffled by the team's choice. because you see, at that point of the year charles was still way above carlos in points and was still fighting for the wdc - silverstone basically killed that. firstly because it had been a conscious choice to hand carlos his first career win (something the team had been trying to do for a while), and then because it was the most blatant consequence of a season that should have been vehemently focused around charles (much like 2023!max) and instead saw binotto saying there was absolutely no need to establish hierarchy between the drivers at any point in the season (ignoring the huge gap in points and talent), that the team wasn't actually doing that bad of a job after all, that they still could win (if only it wasn't for the pesky driver who can't be a strategist and mechanic as well... if you read between the lines). binotto and the team never took responsibility for anything, letting the brunt of the mistakes and the failed endeavor to be shouldered by charles, which also warped people's ideas of charles and carlos and the media narrative about them - something you can still clearly see the effect of, and probably always will.

after summer break minor regs changed and any wdc hope charles had slipped away. the car got worse AND was developed more towards carlos's preferences to be more stable and him more comfortable, so as a whole less fast (the same path that produced the 2023 car, a monstrosity that was still developed by binotto as a "last gift"). charles had to fight tooth and nail but became vicechampion at the end of the year - still no hierarchy established, still not a single race in which charles was helped or favoured during his solid wdc campaign. we don't exactly know what happened behind the scenes, but after more than one year we can extrapolate with a good amount of certainty that the situation was very bad, and that at some point there was a concrete risk of charles deciding to quit ferrari - at least if binotto stayed.

at the end of 2022 it was announced binotto would leave the team (meaning not only his undeserved and disastroudly managed tp role, but the admittedly more successful engineering side as well), and alongside him most of his loyal cohort left too, especially those people he'd promoted to high roles with mixed results. after a short while fred vasseur was chosen to be the new tp - a move probably done in part to assuage charles (who, no matter what people say, is still ferrari's greatest asset) but also to bring new life and a new managerial approach to the team. fred basically had to restructure everything, but most importantly he brought a new way of working and communicating inside the team and towards the outside, focusing on honesty and mistake correction - something charles keeps praising (and that still gives hints about how shit the atmosphere must have been under binotto).

all in all, binotto has been a terrible team principal, probably one of the worst in ferrari's history, who got meagre results yet managed to fumble great drivers, cars and engines, the team's reputation - and to nuke an apparently foolproof wdc campaign. impressive, really, if it hadn't been so painful to live through.