Laurent Mekies is still in his position as Sporting Director of Ferrari. The Frenchman, who had been announced by Red Bull as the future team principal of AlphaTauri, has not yet been released by the Maranello team.
However, at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Canada, the French engineer is already accompanied by a figure who will take over some of his responsibilities: we are talking about Diego Ioverno, who returns to being operational on the track after being the highly regarded head of assembly departments.
The Italian engineer has been the driving force behind Scuderia Ferrari’s resurgence in pit stops: over the winter, the Prancing Horse crew made an impressive leap in quality, rivaling Red Bull in the speed and efficiency of tire changes. Now Diego Ioverno’s tasks are set to change, and it cannot be ruled out that in the coming weeks, the Ferrari pit wall hierarchy could be reshaped.
According to rumors reported by the Italian version of the Motorsport website, and it is necessary to use the conditional tense, the team could release Laurent Mekies around the Hungarian Grand Prix, while waiting to form the duo that will replace the Frenchman. Diego Ioverno will assume sporting and organizational functions, while the new face, possibly coming from a second-tier team, will handle the political and institutional aspects, such as the relationship with the FIA.
Fred Vasseur, therefore, is carrying out the policy of gradually changing the team: as we saw at Le Mans, the team principal seems to have overcome the acute phase of his back pain, which heavily affected him in recent weeks. Together with the top management of the Prancing Horse, he is shaping the Maranello team of the future, refuting rumors that the French manager’s mandate is limited to the end of the 2023 Formula One season.
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On a track usually favorable to the red cars like Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal, Scuderia Ferrari must give a clear indication that they have put behind them the disappointing Spanish outing, where the SF-23 Evo made its debut. The results were disastrous, as if the evolved car showed no positive signs. In reality, the collected data indicated that the chosen path was the right one, while the deliberate setup for Montmelò was wrong.
The team from Maranello, together with Mercedes, had the opportunity to benefit from two days of Pirelli testing at Barcelona, where the technicians led by Enrico Cardile were able to investigate what had not worked during the race weekend. We will find out in Canada whether the insights gained from on-track work will be more favorable than those from simulations…
