2016 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team - Ferrari

[Thunder]

Funnily enough, that's exactly what some Sites here are reporting. (Ferrari trying to bring Brawn back)
http://www.sport.de/news/ne2331107/ferr ... rueckkehr/

Not that i believe it would happen... but we've seen stranger things.

[bhall II]

Brawn's been out too long. I think James Key at Toro Rosso would be a better choice if Ferrari can get him.

Whatever happens, it's yet another reset that will delay any chances of competing for Championships. And this part doesn't exactly look promising...

But La Gazzetta claims that Marchionne, who is also the Fiat Chrysler CEO, has decided to take more control of Ferrari, including an active say on the main management decisions.

[FW17]

Maybe they should get in Alex Hitzinger

[Jolle]

The state Ferrari is in now feels much like the late 80's, early 90's to me. Star drivers (Mansell, Prost), some race wins but above all a mediocre management and no sense of direction. With flipping between Bernard and Nicols as designers. There must be faith, vision and dedication all through the line, from CEO to drivers to get back in front. Mercedes does it like this, RedBull is another good example but Ferrari keeps shooting itself in the foot. You can have a star engineer (like they have now) but if you don't back him up of let him steer the development, you get lost. In the golden years you had more then just Brawn and Schumacher. It was the combination of Montezemolo - Todt - Brawn - Byrne - Schumacher. With the latter maybe the least important one. Getting the old folk in as advisors won't help in the long run, they work like plasters. Arivebenne might be a good (marketing) manager, he's not the team leader Ferrari needs. They need a Jean Todt/Ron Dennis/Steve Jobs. One single focus, all must part for victory.

[TAG]

There really should be a Ferrari F1 reality show... just putting it out there.

[mika vs michael]

Ross Brawn coming back?
http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferra ... 99873/?s=1

[scuderiafan]

I wonder how much Marchionne is helping the team when he gets involved like he has been recently. I think there is a lot of uncertainty in the management right now, especially after going through two team principles in the last two years. This in turn puts uncertainty into the "front-line soldiers" of the engineering teams and such.

I'd like it if Marchionne took care of only the automotive side, and let Arrivabene take control of the F1 team. I don't like that Marchionne dips into both aspects.

[ctdrftna]

Could they get Whitmarsh?

[giantfan10]

I wonder how much Marchionne is helping the team when he gets involved like he has been recently. I think there is a lot of uncertainty in the management right now, especially after going through two team principles in the last two years. This in turn puts uncertainty into the "front-line soldiers" of the engineering teams and such.

I'd like it if Marchionne took care of only the automotive side, and let Arrivabene take control of the F1 team. I don't like that Marchionne dips into both aspects.

i think this is much ado about nothing and its only news because its at Ferrari the team everyone loves to pick apart.
Marchionne is doing his job. you gave the team all the resources they need to succeed and they have underperformed for various reasons this year. What do you expect him to do throw a party ?
Secondly we have no clue what was said in any of these meetings or what the atmosphere was in these meetings,just some jounalists take on it.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Well, at a time when Stability was the need of the hour with subtle evolutionary movements around, it appears that the unsettling news is going to create another mess.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what some Sites here are reporting. (Ferrari trying to bring Brawn back)
http://www.sport.de/news/ne2331107/ferr ... rueckkehr/

Not that i believe it would happen... but we've seen stranger things.

He says, he isn't looking at a 24/7 role and looking for something more like a consultant. Even if he were to take up 24/7 role, what are they really going to achieve with Brawn? When he leaves, they would be back to square.

With Allison out, all the changes that he had put together will come to naught. New leader comes and new structuring will come in place. That means, development and progress takes a hit and we would once again here, "OH, we rebuilding the team under new leadership", that means more frustrating times to the team and to the supporters.

They need to handle this renaissance with a lot of open mindedness and think beyond, the stupid prejudice of BEING ITALIAN IN EVERYTHING (LinkedIn says so too). In modern times, to be able to succeed at a global level, you got to be thinking broad and utilize talent available from everywhere. I guess they are not alone with their stupidity (Honda rejected McLaren advice to hire external staff). They are still running it like a classical F1 team of yore and on the contrary if you look at Mercedes, they are continuously evolving and moving in newer directions, even after Brawn left. Look at Red Bull, their world didn't fell apart when Newey stepped aside late last year.

Ferrari needs a strong, high performing culture and structure from ground up, so that they don't get affected when their top most leadership departs. They need more creative people in their ranks (may be they do, but it's not obvious), because every time there is an avenue of a loop hole that opens, it is someone other than Ferrari who cashes in first. More recently, the tyre pressure tricks that they couldn't get a hold on and there are plenty of examples in the last many years. It seems that they get so immersed in their problems, they are not receptive to avenues opening up to be explored. Whenever they say, the new car is bold concept, it ultimately ends up telling a story that, they REALLY don't know what they have put together and it is a difficult car to manage, on the edge and stuff like that.

If they indeed hire Brawn, then they should definitely hire him as a consultant. Not to the racing team on the road. But for the internal efficiency and restructuring purposes. There seems to be some kind of rot in their design, engineering and operations system that has got built, ever since he departed. But, he is a man of long term plans. Would Ferrari be OK with another long term rebuilding process?

They have been running the Ferrari Driver Academy forever, but hasn't managed to induct even one single talented driver from that. Whereas, Red Bull has been cashing in beautifully with their investment on the young drivers. Again, that shows, they don't know how run that part of the business either.

The bigger and the immediate problem however is, who is available to lead them as Technical Director? Should it just be one? There are very few options in the market and I believe they should PLAN FIRST and then HIRE, rather than Hire many and then plan. This is where Brawn can help them. When Steve Balmer left Microsoft and when they started hunting a new leader, they also quickly realized that, the kind of system that has got built into Microsoft, any outsider would get screwed royally and hence went for someone who was an insider, WELL RESPECTED and the one who knew what kind of political rot is prevalent in the company. It would be one example for Ferrari if they are really interested to look within, to identify AN INTERNAL, HIGHLY RESPECTED and SUPREME MAN MANAGERcandidate, not the one who licks the a** of the president. But for the longer run, they still need to identify problem areas, identify gaps and then solve the problems and fix the gaps.

I was looking through Mercedes company and they have people like John Owen (Chief Designer), Geoff Willis (Technology Director), Aldo Costa (Engineering Director), Mike Elliott (Head of Aerodynamics), all reporting to Paddy Lowe (Executive Director, Technology). And they have someone like Andy Cowell who heads the HPP (PU) division. Below these guys, they also have a host of others, whose names are not big, but when you look through their LinkedIn profiles, they look significant with respect to their experience of having worked under many other F1 teams. So, you see why they are really succeeding in all directions. Ferrari really lags that kind of intellectual horse power. That is why, it is important to carefully plan what they want to do and go with more current and futuristic ways of running the team. Hope they do.

[Jolle]

This semi-crisis comes at the worst possible moment for Ferrari I think. With the new formula for 2017 you need a good basis to work from for years to come.
It's almost like being back in the eighties, you got to have the MP4-2 again (a car I think is most similar to the W05-7 streak Mercedes is making now).

With a leader and technical difficulties they can almost forget to have any championships in the coming years. They should have started this process in 2014 (which they tried but failed) and put the focus on 2017 then already. In F1, in the past and present, it always took years to get back to winning if you lost the groove for a while. The only times teams were able to stop the way down was drastic measures. McLaren is another good example of this. 84-85 was dominant, 86 was lucky, 87 was dramatic and 88-91 was flawless again. In 87 Dennis went trough the company with a big axe. After the loss of Senna and Honda it took a long while to regain the crown again. Williams did more or less the same after 88, after brilliant 86 and 87.
Ferrari does know this, after a quite dramatic 05, they were on the ball again in 06 and with some more big changes, were back in 07 and 08.

It's all about focus.

[George-Jung]

after a quite dramatic 05, they were on the ball again in 06 and with some more big changes, were back in 07 and 08.

They never lost it in 2005... it were the tyres.. one set for the whole race..

[Vasconia]

after a quite dramatic 05, they were on the ball again in 06 and with some more big changes, were back in 07 and 08.

They never lost it in 2005... it were the tyres.. one set for the whole race..

Yes, I dont think that car was bad, it was all about tyres and that embarrasing change of the rules.

[ChrisDanger]

https://twitter.com/f1enigma/status/755723988219879424

[bhall II]

Marchionne is doing his job. you gave the team all the resources they need to succeed and they have underperformed for various reasons this year. What do you expect him to do throw a party?

While a team can't win without a ton of money, there's no guarantee a ton of money will produce wins (see: Panasonic Toyota Racing). So, I'd be content with a more measured and rational approach.

Given the nature of F1 itself - since 1987, reigning Champions have been dethroned only 11 times, and four of those instances occurred on the heels of a significant regulatory change - as well as Maranello's recent history of well-funded, yet misguided, development that has rendered the team practically bereft of a coherent design philosophy, it was never likely that Ferrari could topple Mercedes this year, regardless of the resources thrown at the project. When Marchionne says stuff like this...

"What could have been is unfortunate because it didn't happen - we didn't win - so we need to fix this now," he told Sky Sports F1 on Sunday.

"The team knows that the clock is on and we need to start winning some races and bringing them home."

[...]

"The team has developed a car at this point to the level we expected and I think we knew we weren't going to be exactly on Mercedes at the beginning of the season," he said.

"But the car will develop to the point where there is no distinguishable difference between us and them. That's really important because it will let the drivers run."

...it's like he's expecting an infant to leap within seconds of leaving the womb. In the real world, much less the circus that is F1, there's no such thing as the certainty he seeks. Moreover, undermining his technical managers by going directly to engineers "on the shop floor" to gauge their impression of SF16-H is tantamount to accusing his managers of lying and/or incompetence, and that's hardly the best way to get the most from people.

The smart move has always been to abandon any and all development specific to SF16-H at the very first sign of a fatal flaw, because a) beating Mercedes requires zero flaws and b) little, if any, of what's done to the chassis now will carry over to next season. Polling junior engineers for their opinion is absurd since the tendency is for only senior engineers to have strategic knowledge of the big picture; younger people tend to have a tough time speaking truth to power in general; and there's quite often not a whole lot of overlap between departments on an operational level. For example...

Race engineers rarely know about aerodynamics in detail...

What could he have possibly learned?

I think what we're seeing is that Marchionne doesn't want leaders; he wants yes-men. In other words, he's becoming Montezemelo Part II, and I think we all remember how the original panned out. (Per the post above, I imagine that's a big reason why Brawn wants nothing to do with this.)

Well, at a time when...

It won't happen today. But, at some point, I will get you to see beyond the surface instead of what the surface projects