In less than a month the engines and spotlights will turn on a new Formula 1 season. To fill the void of these weeks of waiting, as always, voices and sub-voices are coming from various teams. Thus we learn that in Brackley, Mercedes has problems with the new engine (it was also said of the Ferrari F2004), while in Maranello there are doubts about the stability of the new gearbox. Moreover, if you want to increase performance – and it seems necessary for Ferrari – it is not so strange that, at this stage, the reliability still needs to be improved.
To say that at Ferrari the morale is not very high at Ferrari is not a point of view: it is just a fact. But that’s okay, early optimism is never productive. We know that the digital presentation of the SF21, close to the Sakhir tests, will be preceded at the end of February by that of the team. Interesting news, and even in this regard the rumours continue to grow. The new organization chart could – and we stress could – retrain professional figures already known at the pit-wall, such as Laurent Mekies and Iñaki Rueda, perhaps promoting the former to a role that offers Mattia Binotto the possibility to focus on other aspects, by entrusting the strategist with other sporting tasks. If so, it would still be a reshuffle, of the kind to which politics has accustomed us in recent days (indeed, in recent years).
There are no gigantic illusions in Ferrari about the outcome of the 2021 Formula 1 season: and given the situation of the rules, it seems quite normal There is, however, the ever-present risk that the drop in performance is not momentary (see 2014 and 2016, to understand) but rather triggers an involutionary process destined to last over time. A problem, unfortunately, historically well known: it happened in the 60s after the world championship of Surtees, in the mid 80s after the one missed by Alboreto and, above all, at the beginning of the 90s after the failed assault by Prost. The ugliness of forty-six months passed between Alain’s victory in Jerez and Berger’s victory in Hockenheim ’94. A period in which everything was seen in Maranello, from the departure of Cesare Fiorio – who had a role equivalent to that of today’s Team Principals – to the arrival of many characters, whose praiseworthy effort, however, were not enough to revive the fortunes of the Italian side. To be precise, the carousel had never stopped, especially since the end of the previous decade. But as always happens, attention tends to focus more on who is in charge in times of crisis.
A couple of peculiar figures come to mind. There was an engineer, to direct the activities, whose name was Gianfranco Ciampolini, who had a lot of work in the Barcelona testing sessions at the end of 1993. Then Gerhard Berger came out of the garage and said: “The preparation of the engines is very bad. We need better quality control”. Bum.
More or less at that time there was the figure of Valerio Bianchi, who came to occupy the role of technical director, in the period between Harvey Postlethwaite and Ross Brawn. Bianchi was a voluminous gentleman with a gentle and polite manner, with the air of the Great Old Man.
It was certainly not their fault that Ferrari had lost the right direction in those years. And it would be unfair and incorrect to unleash the usual rigmarole of Italian technicians not up to par. Also at the beginning of the 90s we still remember the infamous F92A, the double bottom car, which had a foreign origin. Once, over a cappuccino in a bar in Bologna, Jean-Claude Migeot insisted that that project was valid, and if it hadn’t worked it was the fault of the engine and the engineers (usual scheme: an exhaust terminal for the gas, one for the wastegate and one for the barrel). We don’t know if he was right or not, but in those years there was a schizophrenic creativity in the red box that bordered largely on improvising: side panels modified with the hose mid-season, air springs installed and removed over a race weekend, front flaps brought to zero impact by sawing the pins – during qualifying! – and so on.
Jean Todt arrived in the midst of all this chaos and he too needed a long time to put things in order. He did so by demanding and obtaining enormous investments from Luca di Montezemolo (something that would no longer be possible today, for various reasons), establishing a climate of psychological pressure (something that today we try to imitate) but, above all, bringing people at Ferrari. The best on the market. Michael Schumacher as driver, Ross Brawn as technical director, Rory Byrne as designer. All people, including Todt himself even if outside of F1, who had a strength compared to his immediate predecessors: a solid background with winning teams. Today’s Ferrari needs what today, in politics, is defined as a change of people. Looking for the best on the market is an integral part of the talent of great teams and does not at all mean denying what has been done so far. Of course, you have to convince them to come (before the dreaded salary cap becomes a reality), but that is also part of a manager’s job. We hear that, with the new year, John Elkann and Mattia Binotto have become very close. Now we await the results.
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