Ferrari Team Principal: Engine Advantage ‘Not As Huge As Mercedes Had In Past’

In this picture, Ferrari's Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari's German driver Sebastian Vettel, Mercedes' British driver Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes' Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas, Red Bull's Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull's Dutch driver Max Verstappen, middle row (R-L) Force India's French driver Esteban Ocon, Force India's Mexican driver Sergio Perez, Renault's German driver Nico Hulkenberg, Renault's Spanish driver Carlos Sainz,McLaren's Spanish driver Fernando Alonso, McLaren's Belgian driver Stoffel Vandoorne, Williams' Canadian driver Lance Stroll, Williams Russian driver Sergey Sirotkin, top row L-R, Haas French driver Romain Grosjean, Haas Danish driver Kevin Magnussen, Sauber's Swedish driver Marcus Ericsson, Sauber's Monaco driver Charles Leclerc, Toro Rosso's French driver Pierre Gasly and Toro Rosso's New Zealand driver Brendon Hartley pose for a photo prior to the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 25, 2018. SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images

Ferrari's team principal Mattia Binotto has said its engine advantage in the ongoing F1 2019 season is not as big as it is being discussed across and "not as huge as Mercedes had in the past."

F1 chose to switch to the V6 turbo-hybrid engines in 2014 and that's when the dominance of Mercedes began. They beat all their rivals when their manufacturers developed superior engines than the others.
However, in 2019, Ferrari with its new upgrades has left the reigning champions, Mercedes, frustrated at losing time on the straight-lines.

Speaking to Autosport, Binotto rubbished claims that Ferrari's engine has a huge advantage over the other teams.

"Firstly I don't think that the others are converging. I still believe that there are differences between all four manufacturers. We are probably the more powerful engine, but I don't think that the others are all on the same level at all. And I think that our advantage is not as big as you may think. We've got quite a big delta speed to the others, but that's down to the car as well, and the drag," the team principal of the Prancing Horses added.

Comparing to Mercedes' engine advantage in the past, Binotto added, "If we can come down to the more detailed analysis, I think yes we've got an advantage but it's not so huge, for example, as Mercedes had in the past when they were simply the best engine."

Earlier, Mercedes' boss had admitted that the other teams are facing a major issue in the current F1 engine era because Ferrari have the ability to "just crush everybody with their straight-line speed."

"I think you've just got to acknowledge that there is a certain gap that is almost uncatchable, but we've got to do an even better job of putting a good chassis on the track, and understanding the tires, and running the right race strategy. You can see in the last races we had a really good race car even though having a speed deficit on Saturday. I think this is where our opportunities lie, clearly with their kind of power unit performance we shouldn't be expecting to dominate the coming weekends," Toto Wolff added.