In a recent article for formulapassion.it, former Ferrari F1 press officer Alberto Antonini opens up on the Maranello team’s restructuring process and the prospects for the future amid the new top management:
“The dance floor was empty, but the DJ kept pumping music. All around, the guests sat on the sofas or were preparing to leave the party: one of the fixed appointments for the members of the Scuderia, hosted in the port of Monaco on the ship rented by the sponsor. It was getting late and it was then that an important person leapt onto the floor and began to dance by himself, tossing his hair like a windswept Mociovileda. An image of Mattia Binotto that I will keep forever and that today more than ever takes on an allegorical meaning.
Because the future Ferrari F1 management will no longer dance alone. We will soon know which personalities John Elkann and Benedetto Vigna have decided to bring to support Fredèric Vasseur, which will become the new Ferrari team principal. Perhaps a manager so far busy in a different area, in the headquarters in via Abetone. As for the role of technical director, there has been a lot of talk about the return of Simone Resta. It is more than an idea, but so far there has been nothing concrete. If then, in one of the key roles of the Ferrari trio, we instead see an engineer from the power unit department… well, it could mean that the outgoing Team Principal had power up until his final day. Mattia Binotto has always respected and protected ‘his’ men, with the notable exception of Lorenzo Sassi, dedicated to the defunct ultra-fast project, which at a certain point proved to be too immature.
Open parenthesis: having Mattia Binotto at the FIA world council can be a further sign of a decision-making authority extended until the last day of the contract. But personally it seems to me like sending Luis Enrique to represent Spain at a FIFA event, after his exclusion from the World Cup. Parenthesis closed.
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We had an example of multi-headed management in Maranello after Cesare Fiorio’s jubilation in 1991. From there the hunt for Jean Todt started, who had hoped to be able to lead Peugeot into Formula 1, not only as an engineer. Jean Todt was the last Ferrari team principal to leave with a, shall we say, painless transition. Fred Vasseur is certainly not worth Mattia Binotto given the Italian manager’s long experience in Maranello and will certainly not have a tenth of the power that he had, not to mention the one that Jean Todt: but this is not what is being asked of him. When Red Bull took Chris Horner from Arden, opinions of him described him primarily as a car man, an executive. However, regardless of John Elkann’s ambitions, the RBR model is not exactly reproducible in Ferrari. And this is precisely the challenge facing the future bosses of the racing team.
You know, I like to speak in concrete examples. If there is one thing that the Ferrari Racing Division does not lack, it is the desire to be there and the pride of wearing the red uniform (even for those who work in the office and always wear the travel sweatshirts of two years before).
Ferrari is the only team whose mechanics, in times of curfew, regularly engage in a race against time in the paddock to get to the exit turnstile before the fateful hour expires. Anyone who works in Maranello and when returning from a trip goes straight to a meeting as soon as he gets off the bus, knows very well that his counterparts in Brackley have a long weekend after a GP for the following week (provided they don’t race, of course). In the most successful Ferrari ever, Ross Brawn could hardly be found in the office after 2pm on Friday. And if he didn’t answer his cell phone, it was because he usually already had a bait in hand. Why, then, was that Ferrari an example for everyone and why does today’s one want to remodel itself according to the competition?
Maybe the magic word is ‘bureaucracy’. In other words, the claim to manage a racing team, dynamic and flexible by nature, with the rules of the parent company. Concrete examples? When I arrived in Maranello, a new department for communication on social platforms was being created. Better late than never. But as manager, I found myself working with very good guys and guys, who, however, depended directly on the GT, or rather on the road sector. At the beginning I myself wore a ‘pass’ with a blue lace, therefore FCA: and in theory I would have had to answer to three bosses. Bring everything back to a large scale and you will understand why certain processes – purchases, developments and so on – can be so slow and laborious. I once said that Ferrari’s problem was that there was always too much to do to have time for the important things (personal opinion, eh). Well, I humbly think that streamlining certain processes would help make management faster and more effective. For 2023 we are still starting from an excellent project.” – Alberto Antonini wrote.
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