Aston Martin owner looking to hire former Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto as Chief Technical Officer: Reports

Reports claim that Aston Martin F1 team owner Lawrence Stroll is in talks with former Ferrari team principal, Mattia Binotto with the intention of signing him as the team's Chief Technical Officer. This comes after their former CTO, Andrew Green, stepped down from the role in 2023.

Mattia Binotto has been off the F1 grid after ending his 27-year-old career with Ferrari. In December 2022, he announced his resignation from the team after serving them for four years. Although he was spotted at races after that, he has not been involved with any teams. However, F1-news.eu claims that Lawrence Stroll, who is worth $3.9 billion (according to Forbes), is ready to sign Binotto as Aston Martin's Chief Technical Officer.

Even though Binotto's management and strategy at Ferrari caused the team to continually miss out on opportunities, his work as an engineer has proven to be incredibly effective. He boasts over two decades of experience working with the Italian outfit, and if he steps into Aston Martin, it would be extremely beneficial for the team.

Given their current performance, the team is in dire need of a boost. They started out extremely well in the last season, but could not keep up with the developmental pace of their competitors. Ultimately, they finished the season in fifth place. That form has carried over to the ongoing season, with Fernando Alonso mentioning that they are competing in the midfield.

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Fernando Alonso remains optimistic despite Aston Martin's "midfield" performance at Monaco

A disappointing weekend at Monaco saw both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll finish out of points (P11 and P14, respectively). This was the former's second consecutive race without scoring any points.

Reacting to the weekend, Alonso mentioned that the team is "back to the midfield." He told the media:

“All in all difficult weekend, obviously you learn a lot from the difficulties so that’s what we try to do but tough one… [It’s] obviously not ideal, the current form, we seem to go back to the midfield instead of looking at the front runners."

However, he still remains optimistic about the development and feels that a positive upgrade will help them jump a couple of places in the race finish.

“But these things can change quickly, we saw with many other examples how quickly things can change, a good upgrade on the car and you can move five or six positions, so that is what we want to do on the next one and we work hard on that direction,” he said.

Aston Martin currently stands fifth in the constructor's world championship. At a point, they were close to getting ahead of Mercedes but the two have a 52-point gap now.