Italian engineer and the Engineering Director of the Mercedes Formula One team Aldo Costa recently said that he has no desire to return to Scuderia Ferrari. The Italian joined Ferrari in 1995, rising through the design ranks until he was ousted in 2011. Before the 2006 season, Costa was promoted to be the Head of Design and Development at Ferrari, as the team announced Nicholas Tombazis as their new Chief Designer, while on 12 November 2007 Ferrari announced that the Italian engineer would take on the role of technical director.
On 20 July 2011, it was announced that Aldo Costa would leave Ferrari by mutual agreement, while on 30 September 2011 news surfaced that he would be joining Mercedes as Engineering Director of the team. Aldo Costa led the design of the 2013 Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 W04 car under technical director Bob Bell.
And despite constant rumours that he may return to Maranello, Aldo Costa says he is not interested. “I owe my change to Mercedes to Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher,” he told Italy’s Autosprint. “Moving to England was a godsend for me. I feel very comfortable with my current job at Mercedes, I’m at home and I have no intention of leaving.”
Aldo Costa said he enjoyed Mercedes’ fight with Scuderia Ferrari this year, but actually expected the battle to continue until the very end. “By the summer we had a head-to-head but then we moved away because we made progress with the car and also ran reliably. But in the early summer we hadn’t expected that. We assumed that the fight would in all likelihood continue to the end. We expected it not only psychologically, but also in terms of development because we thought that would be necessary to beat Ferrari,” he explained.
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