Red Mist: Can Ferrari rejects make Audi and Red Bull great in F1?

This week was supposed to be all about the Ferrari pace Red Mist promised would materialise at Silverstone, then disappeared just as quickly last weekend. But current affairs have made things rather different.

Roll back a few years to when Ferrari probably had the best car on the grid, yet still managed to cock it up so badly we likely lost two titles. The right hand at Maranello seemed clueless as to what the left was doing. The result? Clown memes of the team, principally of Mattia Binotto, but also his equally complicit right-hand man Laurent Mekies, flooded the internet.

We Tifosi roll our eyes remembering those days. Perpetual strategy snafus, wrong decisions, and plain, basic stupidity were the order of the day. It’s a bit different now.

Fred is plausibly justified in saying Silverstone was down to other circumstances and perhaps a few rare mistakes on Charles’ and maybe Lewis’ parts, causing it to fall apart. And a bit of rain and cold, which the SF-25 does not like.

All of which means Ferrari is doing better in 2025, with by far not the best car on the grid, than what we achieved in 2022 and 2023 with arguably the best. Remember when the cars pitted at the wrong time? When the team wasn’t even in the pitlane? Or they fitted half-yellows and half-whites, sat in the pits while everyone else went faster, and so on?

All of that at the hands of architects Binotto and Mekies. They cost us a title, probably two, and were fired. And most of us said good riddance. Anyway, back to the here and now. Audi enters Formula 1 and who did it call? Might as well have been the Ghostbusters.

But yes, Mattia Binotto. Now let’s forget his Snafu Era at Ferrari for a second. Before that, he was an engineer and an engine man. And a goddamned brilliant one at that. Then he somehow became manager. Oh dear…

And his lieutenant, Mekies, no matter what he said back then in his liaison role, it was always the wrong thing. Cringeworthy. How many Red Mist columns did we waste on that? Anyway, he fled to Toro Rosso, née this, née that, née the next thing, and now I think they call it RB. And he’s done a pretty thorough job of it.

Today, Laurent takes over from Horner at Red Bull. Huge news. Same as Mattia at Sauber, that’s going to be Audi, mind you. Just witness how those horrible green things have risen from useless to podium finishers ahead of Ferrari. In all of six short months. I call that writing on the wall.

There’s a thread here and I’m not going to ignore it. If Binotto and Mekies were so useless at Ferrari, how the hell will they pull it off as capos at Audi and Red Bull? But here’s the tick. They’re not useless.

And history will probably prove that beyond doubt. The point is, Ferrari made them useless. And Mattia and Laurent are certainly not the first, nor will they be the last people Ferrari made useless.

In fact, there’s a pile of skeletons in that cupboard. And the way it’s going with poor Fred, who knows? He could be next. Sadly, Ferrari brings the very worst out of very good people.

Somehow, I’m pretty certain Binotto and Mekies are about to prove just how dire a situation that Maranello cupboard of skeletons really is…