Binotto dismisses Hamilton’s claim Ferrari are ‘months ahead’

Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto has poured cold water on Lewis Hamilton’s claim that his team are “several months ahead” and joked that he suspects Mercedes are the ones in front.

After a couple of years to forget for the Scuderia, it seems Ferrari fans finally have reasons to be optimistic ahead of the 2022 season with the F1-75 impressing in Barcelona.

The new car proved to be one of the most reliable – Ferrari completed the most laps at 439 – and one of the quickest with Charles Leclerc topping the timesheets on day two of the three-day shakedown.

The improvement had others in the paddock predicting big things for Ferrari with Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton suggesting they could be a couple months ahead of the competition.

“You would assume that Ferrari perhaps didn’t do much development on [the 2021] car and just put everything into this year’s car,” Hamilton said after the opening day of running at the Circuit de Catalunya, quoted by f1i.com

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“Does that mean that they’re several months ahead? Or a team is several months ahead? We’ll wait and see.”

However, team boss Binotto laughed off the suggestion and predicted it would Mercedes ahead come the first race in Bahrain.

Charles Leclerc finishes on top for the morning session of running with a time of 1:20.165! #F1 @ScuderiaFerrari pic.twitter.com/w10kRpdGHY

— Formula 1 (@F1) February 23, 2022

“I’m pretty sure that they will be two or three months ahead of us by the time we will be in Bahrain!” joked Binotto when speaking to Sky Sports.

“I think that it’s