Ferrari - Loic Serra: gardening leave reduced to six months?

The ‘top guy’ for Frederic Vasseur
Yesterday, Scuderia Ferrari officially bid farewell to Frenchman Laurent Mekies, who, in his four and a half years at the Maranello team, held crucial positions such as Sporting Director and Trackside Operations Manager, essentially serving as the deputy to team principal and managing director Mattia Binotto.

Starting from January 1, 2024, Laurent Mekies will be the team principal of AlphaTauri, which could even serve as a stepping stone for him to take over from Christian Horner in the future, should the latter end his extraordinary career as head of Red Bull.

Laurent Mekies was described by the new Ferrari team principal, Frederic Vasseur, as a “pillar” of the Maranello team, a key figure that the red team will have to do without. The solution found by the French manager to replace Mekies, who is moving to Faenza, was the appointment of Diego Ioverno as the new Sporting Director of Ferrari, a position through which he “takes on all sporting responsibilities as well as the task of maintaining sporting relations with the FIA (International Automobile Federation).”

In all likelihood, the hiring campaign in the technical market will bring Loic Serra to Maranello, the performance manager at Mercedes. Even the English journalist Joe Saward reports in his blog that Loic Serra has accepted Ferrari’s offer: “It seems that a fish of considerable size has recently been caught, Loic Serra – director of performance at Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 – who is said to have accepted the move to Ferrari,” reads Joe Saward’s blog.

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However, unlike previously emerged information, the gardening leave might not be as long as initially projected. The first rumors indicated an 18-month hiatus for Loic Serra before joining Maranello, but according to the British journalist, “he will probably have to wait for six months before entering Maranello, and it remains to be seen what title he will be given.”