Aldo Costa has left Ferrari

[marcush.]

Alonso surely is one demanding guy ..as a f1 driver should be .So yes he is a huge factor in turning around the fate of a team.
He started this already last year in a very positive way never giving up and spurring the team on to go that extra mile...and it almost paid off.this year again he´s not willing to admit defeat when everyone is already seeing Vettel as the champ.

Costa had to take responsibility as Ferrari is expecting clearly better performance over the year..and it seems Ferrari does lose the plot every year sometime.

[Coefficient]

Replaced by Mike Gascoyne, mark my words.

Doubt it, Gascoyne has already stated his intention to end his career at Lotus. He's too big a character to assimilate, he'd want Domenicali's job at Ferrari.

[munudeges]

This should have been obvious after he took over from Byrne with the disastrous 2005 car - and it wasn't all tyres. Tombazis came in in 2006 to steady the ship development-wise.

[marcush.]

Newey has managed to build some rolling disaters in his career as well...and he will again..there is no guarantee not getting it completely wrong again...
Barnard ,Murray are examples of people who are acknowledged true masters in this field and yet they left F1 only after being hit heavily by the reality of losing the plot or losing interest.

[xpensive]

Mike Gascoyne is the only credible Technical director available, besides, he has attitude to throw away and would fit.

There's no way Montezuma will let his outfit gslip, he has shown in the past that he's capable of being rather pragmatic.

[Gerhard Berger]

You are not going to lose any insight if you are on gardening leave for 6months.He is surely fully informed about what is in the pipeline and he has a clear vision of the direction Ferrari has chosen technically .the following races and season will tell him a lot more than any true outsider about the validity of the decisions taken ..so in effect he is maybe a bit left alone when it comes to Ferraris plans for 2012 ...but he knows what he would have done to erase the trouble they faced with their latest cars.
And as a valuable asset for MB..we should conssider Brawn was in Ferrari when Costa made the climb to be be head of design replacing Byrne.I ´d guess Brawn has a sweet spot for him and knows how to make him perform better than anyone else...

6 months of gardening leave means he can not really contribute to any 2012 car. He can join a team at the beginning of 2012 but it will be hard for him to contribute to that years car. He will most likely start working on the 2013 car. Alot of the knowledge he had from Ferrari will not be as relevant due to the massive regulation changes.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Gerhard

How realistically workable is a 6 month garden leave period? There are so many ways to circumvent it, just wondered how it can be enforced?

[WhiteBlue]

Mike Gascoyne is the only credible Technical director available, besides, he has attitude to throw away and would fit.

There's no way Montezuma will let his outfit gslip, he has shown in the past that he's capable of being rather pragmatic.

Montezuma is a symbol of the past and of failure. He will bugger off to politics and be replaced by someone who really understands F1. I hope they will recruit Todt when his FiA term is over.

[donskar]

I do not believe Costa has a great deal to offer a front-line team. He has never been a "star." He is not a standout. He might improve a mid-field tema, but that is about his ceiling.

[Jeffsvilleusa]

How much can we attribute the performance gains to Alonso's input?

I think it is common knowledge that Alonso contributes approximately six tenths

[xpensive]

Gerhard

How realistically workable is a 6 month garden leave period? There are so many ways to circumvent it, just wondered how it can be enforced?

I've been thru a similar thing JET, means very little, what you have in your head and what you do from home is your own business. What you cannot do is to clock in at the office, but what the hell?

@WB
Montezuma will see it as his personal piece to keep Ferrari competitive, hiring a Technical director with a decent track-record is a part of that. Gascoyne fits the bill where nobody else does.

[PlatinumZealot]

Gascoyne has never made a directed the creation of a fast car, so If I were Ferrari I would look somewhere else.

[lotus7]

Gascoyne has never made a directed the creation of a fast car, so If I were Ferrari I would look somewhere else.

Quite !

[timbo]

Montezuma is a symbol of the past and of failure.

Well, if 8WDCs is failure I can only say that it is a spectacular failure that most of folks could only dream of.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I understand that Costa was released given the first third of the season.
But the raw materials he instilled within the F150th appear to be good enough to challenge now.

We know the changes haven't been massive, so intrinsically the design was not the issue IMO.
I think this still has hallmarks of knee-jerk reaction.

The appointment of Fry naturally marginalised the man, so do we have Fry to thank for the upturn, or Costa's original design?
I'd be leaning to the latter.