Mattia Binotto has been warned that his role as Ferrari team principal may be under threat with the team "in hot water" in their title fight with Red Bull.
Ferrari made the faster start to the 2022 campaign, with Charles Leclerc winning two of the first three races. Carlos Sainz was also scoring a healthy amount of points, while Red Bull had some early-season reliability problems which cost them a significant number of points.
The two teams have switched fortunes since, though, with the Italian team now finding gremlins in their hardware while Max Verstappen has been running riot at the front of the field. The defending champion has won five of the last six races, the other being in Monaco where team-mate Sergio Perez took the chequered flag.
Ferrari, suffering from engine reliability issues that have also affected their customers on the grid, Alfa Romeo and Haas, have dropped 76 points behind in the constructors' table. And according to Formula 1 icon Juan Pablo Montoya, a failure to close that gap could cost Binotto his job.
"As a team they're not executing as good as they need to be. That's what it really comes to," the Colombian, a winner of seven F1 races, told VegasInsider. "You can say half of the wins of Red Bull have been given away by Ferrari, not won by Red Bull. While Red Bull has won some races by performance, some others is like - 'really, did you throw this one away as well?'
"Everybody in Ferrari is in hot water – nobody wants to make a mistake and nobody wants to get blamed and then everybody starts putting pressure. When you start making mistakes, the pressure comes. Even for the mechanics. The guys making mistakes, they're like 'I don't wanna screw up'.
"And they keep making bad calls. It's tough because Red Bull are very aggressive with their strategy. In a way you can say Red Bull have a lot of luck because they get the safety cars at the right time. Things always go their way – Monaco with Checo, Ferrari had like a four-second lead when they called Charles in and he lost four second between the in-lap and the pitstop. He came up behind and it was like, 'how did that happen?'
"Just have clean pit stops. You really need to go back to basics, do easy pit stops, call the race. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. That's the number one. A lot of the mistakes they've made is for not making the calls."
Asked if he believes Ferrari chiefs are under pressure to turn around the fortunes of the team, Montoya added: "Well, yeah, because I think Ferrari it is known that if you don't perform they'll put somebody else in charge. They are not afraid of making changes. And sometimes the consistency goes away, and that's a difficult one."
