When Loïc Serra joined Ferrari in October 2024, the decision to put him in charge of the Scuderia’s technical department immediately attracted considerable attention throughout the Formula 1 paddock. His arrival was viewed as one of the most significant management changes in Maranello for several years, with many insiders believing it could have a major influence on Ferrari’s long-term competitiveness rather than delivering instant results.
For the first time in his career, Team Principal Frederic Vasseur entrusted him with a role that would serve as the central hub of the Maranello team’s technical management. Recruited from Mercedes by his fellow Frenchman, Serra took over the position left vacant by Enrico Cardile, who had accepted Aston Martin’s offer after many years working within Ferrari’s technical structure.
It proved to be a challenging inheritance. The 2025 Formula 1 season was disappointing in terms of results and ultimately fell well short of the enormous expectations surrounding Maranello after the Italian side’s impressive performance gains during the closing stages of the 2024 campaign. Those improvements had convinced many observers that Ferrari would be ready to challenge consistently for both world championships, but reality turned out to be far more complicated.
In many ways, 2025 became a transition year, with the team forced to work on two parallel projects while simultaneously preparing for the sweeping regulation changes that introduced today’s generation of Formula 1 cars. That situation meant Ferrari had to divide its attention between extracting the maximum possible performance from the existing package while also investing heavily in the future.
Rather than focusing solely on immediate race results, the leadership group concentrated on creating a stronger technical foundation that could support Ferrari for many years to come. It was an approach designed to prioritize long-term competitiveness over short-term gains.
2025 laid the foundations for 2026
The SF-25 was already a completed project by the time Loïc Serra officially arrived in Maranello. Its main architectural decisions, aerodynamic philosophy, chassis concept and the majority of its mechanical layout had all been finalized months before the former Mercedes engineer officially joined Ferrari. That meant the opportunities for major changes were naturally limited. Instead of redesigning the car, Serra’s immediate influence came through the way Maranello approached development over the course of the season.
The most significant area where he could make an immediate impact was the development strategy itself, choosing to redirect resources during the spring and summer toward what would become the current 678 project instead of continuing to invest heavily in the SF-25. This strategic decision demonstrated that Ferrari’s new technical leadership was already thinking beyond a single championship campaign. Rather than chasing increasingly marginal gains on an existing car with limited development potential, the objective became maximizing the team’s preparation for the future.
As a result, 2025 became primarily a year of analysis. During this period, the new technical director carefully observed how Ferrari’s racing division operated on a daily basis, identifying both its strengths and weaknesses while working alongside Frederic Vasseur and fellow former Mercedes executive Jerome D’Ambrosio.
Understanding how information moved through the organization became just as important as understanding the car itself. Before introducing major structural changes, Serra first needed a complete picture of how Ferrari’s technical departments interacted with one another and where improvements could realistically be made.
The changes introduced by Loïc Serra
Those who worked with Loïc Serra during his successful Mercedes years describe him as an engineer who places enormous importance on collaboration between departments, believing that every area contributing to a Formula 1 car’s performance must function as part of one fully integrated technical system rather than as isolated groups.
Instead of treating aerodynamics, suspension, vehicle dynamics, tyres and power unit performance as independent disciplines, Serra has consistently promoted the idea that every decision influences multiple areas of the car at the same time. His previous experience at Michelin, where he specialized in tyre and suspension development, provided expertise in an area Ferrari considered essential to strengthen after recognizing that its know-how had occasionally lagged behind some of its closest rivals.
Although tyres may appear to be only one element of a Formula 1 car, modern Grand Prix racing has shown that understanding tyre behaviour is often one of the biggest factors separating the leading teams from the rest of the field. Maximizing tyre performance affects qualifying pace, race consistency, degradation management and overall strategy. His years at the French tyre manufacturer gave Serra an exceptionally deep understanding of vehicle dynamics, knowledge that he later applied throughout Mercedes’ dominant era beginning in 2014.
As Performance Director at Mercedes, he played a crucial role in ensuring that aerodynamics, chassis, suspension, tyres and the power unit all worked together as one interconnected package instead of competing against one another during the development process. That philosophy has naturally followed him to Ferrari.
Greater tyre expertise in management to strengthen a key area
The SF-26 is the first Ferrari entirely developed under the French engineer’s leadership, and comparisons with the previous management structure reveal several significant organizational changes. According to the information available to us, one of the most important organizational improvements concerns the number of direct interactions taking place between departments throughout the development process.
Aerodynamics chief Diego Tondi naturally remains responsible for aerodynamic development. However, Frederic Vasseur strengthened the department by bringing in trusted colleague Franck Sanchez as Head of Aerodynamic Development. Alongside Diego Tondi, Vasseur and Serra have also reinforced the technical structure with fellow French engineers Franck Sanchez, Thomas Bouché and the long-serving Loïc Bigois, creating an experienced group capable of sharing responsibilities across several different technical disciplines.
Serra inherited a well-established and highly capable aerodynamic department, but he has focused on improving communication and increasing the frequency of interaction between senior management, the aerodynamics department and the technical office. The objective has not simply been to hold more meetings. Instead, the intention has been to ensure that decisions are validated more quickly and supported by stronger technical evidence gathered from multiple areas of the organization.
The goal has therefore been to create a much more proactive decision-making process, with closer integration between CFD simulations, wind tunnel testing and technical analysis before major development packages are approved. This allows engineers to identify potential problems earlier while reducing the likelihood that unexpected behaviour only becomes visible once new components reach the racetrack.
At the same time, Frederic Vasseur has intensified recruitment efforts in the tyre engineering field, an area where Ferrari had often lacked resources in the past and where Serra’s management team possesses particularly valuable expertise. This renewed focus reflects an understanding that modern Formula 1 performance depends as much on maximizing tyre operating windows as on producing additional aerodynamic downforce.
Greater collaboration in vehicle dynamics
Ferrari’s technical management has also introduced important changes to its vehicle dynamics models, reducing the risk of one department optimizing a specific area while unintentionally compromising another. This represents one of the biggest cultural changes inside Maranello. Instead of allowing each technical group to pursue its own objectives independently, engineers are now encouraged to evaluate every development within the context of the complete car. The SF-25 itself appears to have accelerated this change.
The car possessed considerable aerodynamic potential, but the interaction between aerodynamics, suspension and vehicle dynamics proved less effective than originally expected during the design phase. Its aerodynamic platform required an extremely narrow operating window, generating floor downforce levels that the suspension struggled to manage while maintaining the ideal setup range throughout an entire race weekend. In simple terms, the aerodynamic package could generate impressive performance, but only under very specific operating conditions that were difficult to reproduce consistently at every circuit.
As a result, Ferrari was forced on numerous race weekends to adopt more conservative setups than originally planned during the design phase, sacrificing some of the car’s theoretical performance in exchange for a more predictable, stable and easier-to-drive package. Although this reduced the ultimate performance ceiling, it often allowed the drivers to extract more consistent lap times over both qualifying and race distance.
One of the most significant organizational changes has therefore been the increased importance given to vehicle dynamics throughout the development process, with far more frequent collaboration between this department and the technical office. This has become increasingly important in an era where on-track testing opportunities are more limited than ever before under Formula 1’s current sporting regulations. Because teams now spend so much of their development time relying on simulations, every department must have complete confidence that the virtual models accurately represent what happens on the actual race circuit. The closer the collaboration between departments, the greater the likelihood that simulation results will match real-world performance.
Stronger mechanical integration
The SF-26 has also demonstrated impressive mechanical performance, particularly in terms of its suspension system. This represents an area where Ferrari had arguably shown weaknesses in previous seasons, especially regarding how effectively the mechanical package supported the aerodynamic concept.
Modern Formula 1 cars generate enormous amounts of downforce through the floor, meaning suspension characteristics directly influence how consistently that aerodynamic performance can be maintained throughout a lap. Rather than viewing suspension as an isolated mechanical component, Ferrari appears to have placed greater emphasis on treating it as an integral part of the overall aerodynamic platform. That stronger connection between mechanical engineering and aerodynamic development is one of the areas where Loïc Serra’s experience appears to have had the greatest influence.
Naturally, it would be an oversimplification to credit Ferrari’s recent progress solely to Loïc Serra, just as it would be unfair to recognize only the senior figures within Frederic Vasseur’s technical leadership, which also includes Diego Tondi, Fabio Montecchi, Marco Adurno, Matteo Togninalli, Enrico Gualtieri and many other highly experienced engineers working behind the scenes. Formula 1 success is always the product of hundreds of people contributing across multiple departments rather than the work of a single individual.
At the same time, however, it is difficult to ignore the way the French technical director has transformed communication and cooperation between these departments since arriving from Mercedes. Many of the improvements currently visible appear to stem not from revolutionary new technology but from a different way of organizing people, sharing information and coordinating development work across the factory. This has happened at a time when Ferrari no longer relies on one clearly defined chief designer in the mold of Adrian Newey at Aston Martin, despite the challenges currently facing the Silverstone-based team.
Instead, the Italian side has increasingly adopted a collaborative structure in which responsibility is distributed among several senior technical figures working together under Frederic Vasseur’s leadership. Ultimately, it is this organizational transformation, rather than dramatic changes to tools, facilities or technical resources, that may prove to be Loïc Serra’s most significant contribution since arriving at Maranello.
While aerodynamic upgrades and mechanical innovations naturally attract the headlines, sustainable success in Formula 1 is often built upon efficient communication, faster decision-making and stronger collaboration between departments.
If Ferrari continues to build on the foundations established during the transition period, the most important legacy of Loïc Serra’s first years at Maranello may not be a single technical innovation or a specific car concept, but the creation of a technical organization capable of developing competitive Formula 1 cars more efficiently for many seasons to come.
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