Ferrari F1 supervisor Mattia Binotto said on Friday that he is less hopeful about his team’s pace than he had been in testing a year ago. He also said the rivals are quicker than them.

Champions Mercedes F1 have been stunningly speedy in the first week of testing at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya. While Ferrari, their nearest matches a year ago, stood apart on Friday for an engine issue that stopped Sebastian Vettel.

On Wednesday, the first day, the entirety of the 2020 vehicles were out on target together, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc oversaw just the eleventh quickest time. Vettel was 6th and Leclerc 8th on Thursday timesheets.

Leclerc said that Ferrari F1 is adopting an alternate strategy after a year ago establishing the tone on the test track however then having their expectations run in the opening races.

Ferrari F1 to continue with 2019 problems?

Mattia Binotto admitted: “We don’t have a winning car for Melbourne. Others are currently faster than us.”

“It is true that we changed our approach compared to the previous year. In the first week, we want to understand our new car, optimize the coordination and collect data. We did not look at lap time. Nevertheless, we are not as optimistic as a year ago. Others are faster than us. We still cannot say by how much” he said.

Binotto regrets: “We don’t have a winning car in Melbourne. I don’t think we’ll beat Mercedes there.”

It may not be as awful as Binotto suggested.

His announcements are clearly chosen so as not to fall into a similar snare as 2019.

“Remember the story from last year. After the test drives, we thought we were competitive and were clearly beaten in Melbourne. Perhaps some will look better testing this year than in the first race.”

The silver arrows are back in top shape in Binotto’s opinion: “They built a very good car.”