The Italian F1 team announced earlier this week that it had accepted Binotto’s offer to step down as team principal after just under four years in the role.
Binotto’s decision came after a roller-coaster season for Ferrari, where early-season winning highs were clouded by later frustrations over poor reliability, strategy errors and driver errors.
Ultimately, Binotto made his decision after feeling he didn’t have the full trust of Ferrari chairman John Elkann and CEO Benedetto Vigna.
Ferrari has said it hopes to install a new team boss in the new year, but there is already a widely held belief that the team has seriously jeopardized its chances for 2023 by losing the talent and experience of Binotto technically and managerially.
Speaking in London at the annual Guild of Motoring Writers awards dinner on Thursday night, Brundle conceded that Ferrari were still in a unique position as a team due to their supporters in Italy.
“You work for a country at Ferrari, not just for a team, of course,” said Brundle, who was made an honorary member of the Guild.
“They’ve lost their technical director and their team manager, so unless they have someone very, very good to replace him immediately, it all seems a bit strange. But that’s the nature of it- this.
Philip Schofield and Martin Brundle
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
Brundle joked that he “liked the job himself”, before suggesting more seriously that the team might need to look for someone who wouldn’t be in the Italian media spotlight as heavily as Binotto.
“You have to speak Italian,” he says. “And I think the problem is, if you look back to when they were last successful, they had a Frenchman in Jean Todt, a Briton in Ross Brawn, a South African in Rory Byrne and so on.
“Maybe that’s still what they need, something like that: people who aren’t fully exposed to Italian daily media.”
