Semi-retired racing car designer and motorsport pundit/commentator Gary Anderson believes Scuderia Ferrari could return to their old ways of firing people if the Maranello team does not perform as expected in the 2022 Formula One season. The Italian side has not been able to score a race win since the 2019 campaign and in the last two years had to settle for less ambitious targers, a major decline for the famous Maranello outfit.
In other times, this situation would have probably led to key staff members losing their jobs, but Ferrari kept faith in their current crew for 2021, a decision which was rewarded as the Scuderia made some important progress, taking third place in the Constructors’ Championship, behind the untouchables Mercedes and Red Bull, in a championship in which Charles Leclerc was able to score two great pole positions, along with a podium for P2 in the British Grand Prix.
His teammate Carlos Sainz added four further podiums to Ferrari’s good results in 2021, including a second place finish on the streets of Monte Carlo, a P3 at the Hungaroring, as weel as in the Russian Grand Prix and in the final round of the season, in Abu Dhabi.
But the Italian side was already focused on the project for the 2022 season, with new regulations which will represent one of the biggest changes Formula 1 has seen between seasons and Scuderia Ferrari have their eyes set on becoming title challengers after a long time.
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Yet if this will not materialise, Formula 1 designer and pundit Gary Anderson feels some staff will find themselves out of work.
In a recent article for The Race in which he previews the next championship Gary Anderson explained:
“Ferrari superficially seems like the most stable team of all over the last 20-odd years given its consistent identity, but that is not really the case. In reality, Ferrari is probably the most unstable as for many years it has had a philosophy of either succeeding or holding someone responsible for the failure and pushing them aside. The new upper management at Ferrari seems to have settled this down a little now. There have not been many firings with just a few people moved sideways. Mattia Binotto still rules the roost and as team principal also effectively oversees the technical side as well. To do both of these is a push but the structure behind him, which has been changed several times in recent years, needs to start to count. Now is the time for Ferrari to recover that lost ground. After the last major rule change in 2017, I was very impressed with what Ferrari came up with. Ferrari found the solution to the shorter sidepods before anyone else, so does have the vision within the company to react to a changing situation. Something derailed that and it had to throw away 2020 to recover from pushing the limits too far on its rule interpretation for the hybrid power unit. It more or less recovered from that for the 2021 season but the limit on development did the team no favours. Ferrari needs to dig deep now because all of Italy sees these changes as a new opportunity for Ferrari to be successful. If not, it will very quickly go back to the old ways of working and we will see some heads roll.” – he explained.
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