With the COVID-19 pandemic having forced a drastic reshaping of the 2020 season, the 10 Formula 1 teams voted in March to postpone the introduction of the sport’s hotly anticipated new aerodynamic rules until 2022. And according to Ferrari Team Principal Mattia Binotto, it’s a decision that almost certainly wasn’t in his squad’s best interests...

The FIA announced on March 19, a week after the Australian Grand Prix was forced into postponement, that the new aerodynamic rules for F1 – designed to encourage closer racing on track – would be pushed back a year until 2022, with the teams agreeing to race their 2020 cars across 2021 to compensate.

READ MORE: What the 2021 rules delay means for F1

And reflecting on the decision to delay the new rules – which were felt by many to be a strong opportunity for Ferrari to get back on equal footing with Mercedes after six consecutive seasons of Silver Arrows dominance – Binotto stood by what he called a “responsible decision”.

“I think it was the right and good decision,” Binotto told Sky Sports F1. “Obviously it has to be a responsible decision. I think the situation with the emergency we are facing becomes the priority, not only the interests of a single team… but really looking at the wider picture and wider situation.

“Obviously we know some teams were in difficulty, time would become very tight to develop new cars for 2021, so I think at the end that was the right choice. Is that somehow not in favour of Ferrari? Very likely, yes, maybe, but I think that we are challengers, and we are as well people that want to do each time better compared to what we did in the past, and there will be [a time] where eventually… we can recover and we will be stronger.”

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