Well, that didn’t take long. After a worrying winter testing and disastrous opening three races of a truncated season, Ferrari have pulled back the chain, seated guests and fired up the tilt-a-whirl for some internal restructuring.
Ferrari seems to be the team where careers go to wither with Stefano Domenicali, Marco Mattiacci, Maurizio Arrivebene and now Mattia Binotto…one wonders just how long things will remain stable at the Scuderia.
This is the changing environment that the recently deceased CEO, Sergio Marchionne, created with the ouster of Luca di Montezemolo. It’s been downhill ever since. There’s nothing easy about winning in Formula 1 but Ferrari have had so many major changes in leadership, it is hard to believe they would be fighting for titles with so much internal attrition.
With so many management changes as well as driver changes, the consistency just isn’t there and it will be interesting to see if they can turn this ship around…in fact, the Tifosi are banking on it.
Ferrari Press Release:
Scuderia Ferrari has restructured its technical department to render it more effective and assure a more holistic emphasis on performance development. This has been achieved by instituting a chain of command that is more focused and simplified and provides the heads of each department the necessary powers to achieve their objectives.
To this end, it has also established a new Performance Development department, headed up by Enrico Cardile.
The other main areas are unchanged with Enrico Gualtieri in charge of the Power Unit, Laurent Mekies as Sporting Director and in charge of trackside activities, while Simone Resta will continue to lead the Chassis Engineering department.
Mattia Binotto Team Principal and Managing Director Scuderia Ferrari
“As hinted at a few days ago, we are making changes to the technical side of the organisation so as to speed up the design and development on the car performance front. A change of direction was needed to define clear lines of responsibility and working processes, while reaffirming the company’s faith in its technical talent pool. The department run by Enrico Cardile will be able to count on the experience of Rory Byrne and established engineers such as David Sanchez. It will be the cornerstone of the car’s development.
“We believe Ferrari personnel are of the highest level and we have nothing to envy about our main competitors in this respect, but we had to make a decisive change, raising the bar in terms of the responsibilities of the department heads.
“We have said it several times, but it’s worth repeating: we have started to lay the foundations of a process which should lead to a new and enduring winning cycle. It will take some time and we will suffer setbacks like the one we are experiencing right now in terms of results and performance. However, we must react to these shortcomings with strength and determination to get back to being at the very top of this sport as soon as possible. This is what we all want and what our fans all over the world expect of us”.
During the weekend it was clear the Mission Winnow (MW) logo was not on the car (but is shown in the stock image leading this article). Perhaps with another reorganization adding a management position entitled Sticker-in-Chief the performance of the cars would improve.
In the early seventies, I had a poster on my office wall that read “When ever we were not making progress we would reorganize. This was done to give the impression of progress whereas in reality it amounted to obfuscation.”
Pat Goodman
I’m always amazed at how pinnacle Formula 1 or any top racing series in. Just one second a lap is the difference between a great car and a crap car. Every lap, lap after lap, driving on the edge of grip, and consistently delivering roughly the same low times. Pretty amazing stuff. These guys and girls are physics artists.