A long-standing paddock story about Ross Brawn’s first days at Ferrari has resurfaced as an explanation for the working culture that helped transform Maranello into Formula 1’s dominant force — and, according to Leo Turrini, it is precisely the mentality Lewis Hamilton now wants the team to rediscover.
The anecdote dates back to the beginning of Ross Brawn’s Ferrari career. The British engineer arrived from Benetton, where he had helped Michael Schumacher win two Drivers’ Championships, and reunited with the German one year after Michael Schumacher had moved to Maranello. Hired as technical director at the end of 1996, Ross Brawn began working with Ferrari for the 1997 season.
Among the many stories from that period, Leo Turrini has revisited one that arguably explains the transformation of Ferrari more clearly than any organisational chart. The same broader questions about how Maranello works internally remain central today, particularly as Lewis Hamilton pushes for organisational change at Ferrari.
Ross Brawn’s rule ended Ferrari’s blame culture
Leo Turrini recalled the story of Ross Brawn’s first meeting with the heads of Ferrari’s different technical areas, covering everything from the chassis and aerodynamics to the engine and supplier relationships.
“When Ross Brawn arrived in 1997, according to the story, at his first meeting with all the department heads — from chassis to aerodynamics, engine and supplier relations — Ross Brawn, who at that point did not yet speak the broken Italian he would use in later years and spoke only English, said: ‘From now on, the first time I hear one of you say “it’s the chassis department’s fault”, “it’s aerodynamics’ fault”, “we lost because of the engine”, that person will stop working for us and will move to another area, outside Formula 1.’”
Whether those were the precise words matters less than the principle behind them. Ferrari had been accustomed to dividing responsibility for failure between departments. Ross Brawn’s message was that victories and defeats belonged to everyone. Pointing a finger at colleagues elsewhere in the organisation meant working against the team itself, because the final performance of the car was the product of every department combined.
The culture behind Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher era
That method, combined with the work of Jean Todt and Rory Byrne, formed the foundation of the most successful period in Ferrari history. The Scuderia won the Constructors’ Championship in 1999 before taking both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles for five consecutive seasons from 2000 through 2004.
Ross Brawn left Maranello at the end of 2006, and over time, according to Leo Turrini, that way of working gradually disappeared with him.
“That is the culture which, after that era ended around 20 years ago, we progressively lost at Maranello. We need to find the people capable of restoring that approach. And I believe Lewis Hamilton is saying exactly this.”
The issue is not simply about identifying which component of the car is underperforming. The broader question concerns how Ferrari responds when problems emerge and whether responsibility is shared throughout the organisation rather than divided between individual departments. Recent debates over Ferrari’s internal communication and organisational structure have made that theme particularly relevant again.
Why Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes experience matters
The connection with Lewis Hamilton is significant. The seven-time world champion spent 12 seasons at Mercedes, an organisation that developed from Brawn GP, the team that won the 2009 World Championship.
Ross Brawn continued to lead the Brackley-based operation until 2013, which was also Lewis Hamilton’s first season with Mercedes, before Toto Wolff subsequently took over leadership responsibilities.
According to Leo Turrini’s interpretation, the culture that developed around finding solutions rather than assigning blame remained part of the organisation and contributed to the environment in which Mercedes eventually won eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships.
That experience helps explain why Lewis Hamilton’s comments since joining Ferrari have often focused not only on what the car lacks technically, but also on how the organisation operates. The British driver’s adaptation to Maranello and his influence within the team remain central themes in the latest Lewis Hamilton Ferrari developments.
Lewis Hamilton may be asking Ferrari to rediscover its own lesson
In this sense, the irony is clear. Ferrari was one of the first teams to learn this organisational lesson during its most successful modern era, but it may now find itself being reminded of the same principle by a driver who spent most of his career elsewhere.
Ross Brawn needed three seasons to take Ferrari to its first championship of that cycle, with the Constructors’ title arriving in 1999. Today, after two decades marked by repeated changes at the top of the organisation, patience is far more limited.
The central question is therefore whether Ferrari can find figures willing and able to re-establish that collective responsibility — people prepared to challenge internal habits as firmly as Ross Brawn once did, even if that means making uncomfortable decisions along the way.
For Leo Turrini, the message behind Lewis Hamilton’s calls for change is therefore not necessarily a demand for Ferrari to become something entirely different. Instead, it may be a request for Maranello to recover one of the fundamental principles that once helped make the Scuderia virtually unbeatable.
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