No surprises, all went according to a script that had already been written. Scuderia Ferrari ends the cycle of Mattia Binotto and launches into the future with Frederic Vasseur. Ferrari chose a French manager who had several important supporters that have backed him up for the role in Maranello, starting with Carlos Tavares, the very powerful CEO of Stellantis. And the aeronautical engineer’s dream materialized a few years after the meeting with Sergio Marchionne who had already identified him as a possible replacement for Mattia Binotto.
Since then, the relationship between the two team principals has never been the same and, indeed, there has been a divergence of interests which has led Alfa Romeo to take a different path, losing its Ferrari junior team status to Haas. Alfa Romeo even decided for the 2022 ground effect car to give up some Ferrari technical facilities such as the transmission and rear suspension of the F1-75, to devote itself to his own project, more independent from the Prancing Horse.
And the door to Hinwil has also closed for the Maranello drivers, given that the second seat seemed reserved for a young member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, but in the last few years was instead given to Chinese driver Guanyu Zhou. Sauber is gradually leaving the Ferrari orbit to become the new gravitational center around which Audi is planning its F1 debut from 2026 with the debut of the new power units.
Ferrari entrusts the keys to Formula 1 Racing Division to Fred Vasseur, but the power that the Frenchman will receive will be much smaller than the one which Mattia Binotto had assumed in front of a Ferrari senior management that has too often been silent if not completely lacking.
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The president, John Elkann on is certainly a communicator, but a man of numbers, of budgets. He had already lost confidence in Mattia Binotto before the 2022 Formula 1 season, but the amazing start of the F1-75 car, with a one-two finish in the Bahrain Grand Prix and the prospect of seemingly challenging Red Bull slowed down a plan that was already set in motion.
Piero Ferrari had “advised” Mattia Binotto to make some staff changes to the Ferrari F1 structure in the light of the many mistakes that marked the 2022 Formula 1 season, but Mattia with perseverance and a some stubbornness did not want to change the team, always defending a team that was clearly not yet ready to fight for the two world championships.
Mattia Binotto went to tussle with the senior management and lost. Now the Racing Division is supervised by Benedetto Vigna, the Maranello’s managing director, who is increasingly interested in taking a look at racing, but it’s up to Frederic to make a change: it’s not true that Ferrari has to start from scratch to hope to counter Red Bull and Mercedes. The car seemed consistent as a project and the 675 seems to have fix the key issues of the F1-75. Fred Vasseur finds himself served on a silver platter a car that everyone in the Racing Department talks about in positive terms.
The Frenchman will have to give the team cohesion: the confirmation of Laurent Mekies as sporting director indicates that there will be no major changes in the pit wall, but it is possible that the young strategist Ravin Jain will be invested with more responsibilities.
And on a technical level, the direction will be divided between two figures: Enrico Cardile for the chassis and Enrico Gualtieri for the power units. While Simone Resta, returning to Ferrari from Haas after his exile first in Alfa Romeo and then in Gunther Steiner’s team, could become the chief designer of the 2024 single-seater. The engineer from Imola is very good at preparing the technical staff by fueling new ideas that will find space on future Ferrari car, which has been too conservative regarding certain choices such as the suspension.
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