Simone Resta will be the strategic development director at Mercedes. Enrico Sampò, former driver simulator team leader of Scuderia Ferrari, is also moving to Brackley.
It’s a key moment of the season in terms of technical market moves, especially in Formula 1. The latest big move comes from Mercedes, which shops in the ideal Maranello bench by bringing home, or rather to Brackley, two important technicians.
The first of the two is a well-known name in the Formula 1 world and among most Formula 1 enthusiasts: we’re talking about Simone Resta.
The engineer from Imola, long-time designer at Ferrari with significant experiences at Minardi, Alfa Romeo, and Haas, leaves Italy to move to England to join Toto Wolff’s team. At the Brackley factory, he will serve as the strategic development director and will work closely with James Allison.
The current technical director of Mercedes and the future engineer at Brackley have already had the opportunity to work together in the past decade when both were part of the technical department in Maranello. Now they will reunite to work together and try to bring Mercedes back to the glory days of the 2014-2021 era.
Mercedes took advantage of Simone Resta’s situation, currently at Ferrari but without a specific role in the team. Since Mattia Binotto took over the team, Simone Resta had always worked for customer teams – regarding engines – alternating his roles between Hinwil and Gene Haas’s team with brief returns to Ferrari. This, at least until the coming years, will be the last one before definitively leaving the Prancing Horse to wear a white polo shirt with the logo of the three-pointed star, which will find its place just below the left shoulder.
The second engineer leaving Ferrari to join Mercedes is Enrico Sampò. At Maranello, he held the position of driver simulator team leader, while at Mercedes, he will be the head of performance software applications.
Sampò worked for just under a year at Magneti-Marelli in 2007, while since 2011 he has held various roles at Ferrari, including vehicle modeling and simulation engineer, vehicle modeling and simulation team leader, senior vehicle dynamicist, performance methodology team leader, and driving simulator team leader over the past 4 years.
Both, having signed contracts with Mercedes, will not be able to work for their new team until 2025. For Toto Wolff’s team, however, these moves will bolster the technical department, which needed new, experienced figures to bring in fresh ideas to climb back up.
Leave a Reply