'Engineer' Binotto should not be Ferrari boss

(GMM) Former F1 team boss Colin Kolles does not think Mattia Binotto can steer Ferrari out of crisis and back to producing world championship-winning cars.

Having replaced Maurizio Arrivabene as team boss from 2019, Binotto is now overseeing a worrying slump for the fabled Maranello team.

“Binotto is a very good engineer,” Kolles, who ran the Spyker and Hispania teams, told Sport’s AvD Motorsport Magazin.

“But an engineer is not a team boss. From my point of view, an engineer cannot be a team boss either.”

Kolles said Binotto’s people-management is his biggest weakness.

“I know Binotto personally,” Kolles added. “He is a person who is shaped by numbers and not by feelings. There is no warmth.

“These engineers do not understand the psychological side.”

Indeed, Sebastian Vettel is known for being an emotional and sensitive driver, and the German is now obviously struggling to cope with his final year in red.

“The problem is how he (Vettel) was dumped,” Kolles explains.

“It was put in the press that Vettel was gambling for a big salary, but that never happened. He just got a call with covid-19 as an excuse.

“And they announced the separation much too early. That completely destroyed the season for them,” he added.

“But the problems started a few years ago, when Sebastian could have won the world championship but did not get the team’s full support.

“When a team wants to become world champion, it has to have one number 1 driver. And that should have been Vettel,” said Kolles.

“Drivers are very sensitive when they feel they are not receiving full support.”