Aldo Costa has left Ferrari

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Ferrari's Former technical director has left by mutual consent.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93198

I think looking at the F150th performance particularly at Silverstone and Montreal, is this a knee jerk reaction by Ferrari?
Likely destinations?

[bhall]

It wouldn't surprise me to see him at Lotus Renault next year, as their car appears to borrow quite a few design queues from Ferrari.

[FLC]

I wouldn't consider this a knee jerk reaction. The F10 wasn't very competitive at the beginning of last season, and the F60 wasn't competitive at all. So this is actually the 3rd year in a row of bad starts for Ferrari. A change was probably needed.

[Crafty]

It wouldn't surprise me to see him at Lotus Renault next year, as their car appears to borrow quite a few design queues from Ferrari.

could they afford it ? apparently £40m down last year and are taking big loans to stay afloat..

[Gerhard Berger]

Ferrari's Former technical director has left by mutual consent.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/93198

I think looking at the F150th performance particularly at Silverstone and Montreal, is this a knee jerk reaction by Ferrari?
Likely destinations?

He resigned as technical director back in May and since then Ferrari have improved. Certainly not a knee jerk reaction. The guy had his chance but showed that he can't do anything special without having Rory Byrne hold his hand.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Possibly Gerhard,


But with only a few tweaks the car is 0.2 off Planet Red Bull. I haven't really seen anything of a paradigm shift on the car that would indicate it was a dog to begin with. Maybe it didnt find the tyre sweetspot quickly enough?
Perhaps Costa outlived his stay and Ferrari are looking for a magic bullet(Pat Fry) to kill the scapegoat(Costa).

I still think he would have alot to offer other teams chasing Red Bull, especially with his inner workings of the halls of power at Ferrari. Would he fit in at a place like Mclaren, Mercedes or Renault?

With Bell at Mercedes the scope for Costa is narrow. Although I think he would be a massive benefit to them.
Renault could do with a seasoned head like him too. And Mclaren will pick up anything Ferrari.... (joke macca fans)

[axle]

With Williams' recruitment drive right now I could imagine them picking him up too...

[PlatinumZealot]

Aldo Costa is on leave. He will be back in 2012 in some other role at Ferrari.

[bhall]

"Gardening leave" is just the term given to the period of time Costa must wait before joining another team. His career at Ferrari is done.

[axle]

Indeed, Gardening leave means that he's not allowed to work for anyone else but isn't going to be allowed back into Maranello either. People with access who are normally privvy to highly sensitive data are put on it to make sure that they are at least 6 months out of date when they join someone else. And 6months is a lifetime in F1.

[marcush.]

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...

[HampusA]

I´m dying to see next years car though
Hopefully not as conservative as this years car.

[marcush.]

I´m dying to see next years car though
Hopefully not as conservative as this years car.

I could imagine it will be red....

[xpensive]

Replaced by Mike Gascoyne, mark my words.

[dren]

Replaced by Mike Gascoyne, mark my words.

LMAO, that has been true so many times.

As for Costa...I'm pretty sure Ferrari sacked him, but let him off easy in the press. Ferrari treats everyone like family, so this is understandable. I admire them in that respect.

But...was it Costa stepping down that aided with the Ferrari upgrades? Surely those were in the works way before he stepped down. Didn't they have issues with their wind tunnel? Costa was there last year when the team had a big performance jump midseason...so it's harsh to say Costa leaving is the reason for the performance gains.

I actually admire the Ferrari designs recently. Very simplistic, but executed well. How much can we attribute the performance gains to Alonso's input?