Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has confirmed that he will be absent from more races in 2021, in order to give him time to focus on the development of next year’s car.
Binotto decided not to attend the Turkish and Bahrain Grand Prix races last season to see how the team fared without his trackside presence.
It proved a timely test, as he was subsequently forced to miss the Abu Dhabi season finale due to illness, from which he has now recovered.
Binotto said that it has reassured him that he would be able to spend time concentrating on other aspects of the team operation without needing to travel to all 23 races this year.
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“My intention will be again not to be at all the races in the 2021 season,” he confirmed. “There is an entire company to manage and it’s not only the race weekend at the race track.
“There are a lot of things going on back at Maranello,” he added. “A lot of people to manage, co-ordinate, and the activity itself.
“Certainly I will be part of the start of the season itself. It will be important to at least assess our performance at the start, to make sure that everything is working well at the race track.
“But at some stage I will start missing some races and will be back at Maranello concentrating on 2022.”
But not being physically present in the Grand Prix paddock doesn’t mean that he will be any less involved in the events of the race weekend.
“At Maranello we’ve got our ‘remote garage’ so I will always be in direct contact with the race track,” he said.
Binotto expected the team’s sporting director Laurent Mekies to do a good job at the track for those events where he wasn’t there himself.
Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies