Ferrari arrives at the next round of the 2025 Formula 1 championship decidedly battered. The Prancing Horse, in fact, heads into the seventh Grand Prix of the season at the circuit named after Enzo and Dino Ferrari with a lot of doubts, unfortunately much more than expected. The Formula 1 season has started disastrously from every point of view, just when there was hope that the historic Italian team had finally embarked on a technically sound path.
Although not without its limits, last season was still positive, considering that the Red Team returned to fighting for something important right up to the final race. If, as it seems, the Maranello engineers are designing a sort of “B” version of the SF-25, then many questions need to be asked—questions that involve all levels of the Italian team, from technical direction to managerial leadership.
The first question is this: Will the Italian team be able to change direction with developments and at least give some meaning to the 2025 Formula 1 championship? It is a question that is viewed with some skepticism, considering Ferrari’s track record and the super McLaren, a team with a significant technical advantage, capable of dominating the first part of the season without even breaking a sweat.
To a straightforward question, the answer is not as obvious as it might seem: who made the key decisions in terms of designing the car competing in the current championship? It’s worth remembering that Italian aerodynamicist Enrico Cardile resigned in July last year, at a time when many resources were already allocated to the 677 technical project. It is also true that the Technical Director rarely gets into the details of the work done by various divisions.
Nonetheless, he ties it all together, managing in a synergistic way a very complex technical project. Therefore, the technical discontinuity that characterizes the Italian car compared to the 2024 version could have been launched precisely during the mandate of the engineer from Arezzo. In some ways, it’s a scenario similar to 2023, when Mattia Binotto was removed from his duties in December 2022. In that case too, it was a matter of “induced” resignation.
The sudden split between Enrico Cardile and the Maranello team was a real bolt from the blue, forcing Frederic Vasseur to take over the technical responsibilities on an interim basis. Previously, the Ferrari team principal had recruited his fellow countrymen Loïc Serra and Jérôme D’Ambrosio from Mercedes. However, upon arriving in Italy, the Frenchman was given a completely different role.
Loic Serra was therefore catapulted into the lead due to lack of alternatives. The former Mercedes technician was assigned the role of Head of Chassis Performance Engineering, reporting directly to Frederic Vasseur, with the main task of coordinating the track engineering departments, aerodynamic development, aerodynamic operations, and vehicle performance—a sort of glue, in short.
To sum things up, it is worth highlighting a fact that partly explains a lot. The Frenchman from the Brackley team had not, in fact, been hired as a technical director. His tasks were different—no less important, but not in a leadership capacity. However, due to the lack of optimal solutions, Loic Serra was promoted to that role to make up for an unexpected and unpredictable organizational change.
After all, in his very long career, the former Michelin engineer had never before taken on the role of technical director of a team. At this point, Loic Serra inherited a project already in an advanced stage of development, and above all without a proper instruction manual—especially since in the following months it emerged that Enrico Cardile’s departure was anything but painless. This is, in a way, the story of Ferrari: a team that wants to get things done, but unfortunately can’t seem to make it happen.
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