Grand Prix Rejects

Well, it seems that there has been a noticeable shake up at Ferrari - Ferrari have confirmed that Arrivabene is leaving the team and that Mattia Binotto is taking over Arrivabene's role with immediate effect today. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferr ... n/4320478/

As of now, it is not clear who will be replacing Binotto as the technical department head at Ferrari - Binotto is retaining his technical role for now, but there have been a few suggestions that he may delegate some of those technical roles back down to Enrico Cardile, the head of aerodynamics, and Corrado Iotti, the head of powertrain development.

Wow, really?

Honestly, this off-season is one of the few where I'd say, before any testing has even begun, that Ferrari has a serious chance to fight for the championship next year. Regardless of how they performed in 2018, they now have definitely the strongest line-up of the front teams, whilst Mercedes are possibly going to be stuck with an off-pace Bottas for another season. There's a lot of good to hope for in 2019, and I don't really see how sacking Arrivabene is going to keep any kind of stability in the coming season.

But then again, what do I know.

Rob Dylan wrote:Wow, really?

Honestly, this off-season is one of the few where I'd say, before any testing has even begun, that Ferrari has a serious chance to fight for the championship next year. Regardless of how they performed in 2018, they now have definitely the strongest line-up of the front teams, whilst Mercedes are possibly going to be stuck with an off-pace Bottas for another season. There's a lot of good to hope for in 2019, and I don't really see how sacking Arrivabene is going to keep any kind of stability in the coming season.

But then again, what do I know.

I'm a bit lost on why the Ferrari is the car to beat. After 5 years of Red Bull cars fitting Vettel well, why is he struggling now? It must be some sort of difference in design philosophy between Ferrari and Red Bull.

I can see Ferrari taking the constructors championship next year, but based on the pressure with Vettel I'm about to start breaking out the Will Power memes.

I'm not surprised at this. Possibly the start of a Ferrari implosion. And if LeClerc's better than Vettel this year there'll be another head rolling.

At least they already have a replacement for Vettel lined up if he fails again...

Gertrand Bachot wrote:At least they already have a replacement for Vettel lined up if he fails again...

At this rate "Formula 1" will only have 2 teams, unless Renault or Racing Point experience a massive upshift in performance this year.

CaptainGetz12 wrote:

Rob Dylan wrote:Wow, really?

Honestly, this off-season is one of the few where I'd say, before any testing has even begun, that Ferrari has a serious chance to fight for the championship next year. Regardless of how they performed in 2018, they now have definitely the strongest line-up of the front teams, whilst Mercedes are possibly going to be stuck with an off-pace Bottas for another season. There's a lot of good to hope for in 2019, and I don't really see how sacking Arrivabene is going to keep any kind of stability in the coming season.

But then again, what do I know.

I'm a bit lost on why the Ferrari is the car to beat. After 5 years of Red Bull cars fitting Vettel well, why is he struggling now? It must be some sort of difference in design philosophy between Ferrari and Red Bull.

I can see Ferrari taking the constructors championship next year, but based on the pressure with Vettel I'm about to start breaking out the Will Power memes.

The irony is that Red Bull themselves have copied a number of aero pieces from the SF71-H over the year - the feeling does seem to be that, under Binotto, Ferrari's technical department have been more innovative than they've been in the past.

With regards to Vettel, there have been some wondering if perhaps his downturn in form in 2018 might have been in part due to an internal conflict between Arrivabene and Vettel. When you look at the relationship between Hamilton and Mercedes, it felt like the two were far more in sync with each other and therefore, even when they might not have the best car, they were still more effective at extracting the maximum performance they could, or at the very least ensuring limiting the damage as much as they could.

With Vettel and Ferrari, the relationship did feel more strained at times - it felt like you had moments of individual brilliance, but it felt as if they were struggling to transform that into a consistently strong performance. Either you'd have a situation where the team was on the up, but the drivers were performing badly, or the drivers did well and the team didn't performn - and, occasionally, both going wrong at once.

There were some who suggested that might have been because Vettel was getting more involved in leading the team, and in doing so was coming into conflict with Arrivabene (who felt that Vettel was interfering in areas where he shouldn't be).

It is fair to say that there do not seem to be many in the press who miss Arrivabene - indeed, quite a few felt like they were happy to stick the boot in, though some gave a more nuanced appraisal. The general consensus does seem to be broadly in favour of Binotto's appointment though, and on the whole I think that appointing Binotto is a positive move for the team, albeit perhaps not in the best circumstances.

Spectoremg wrote:I'm not surprised at this. Possibly the start of a Ferrari implosion. And if LeClerc's better than Vettel this year there'll be another head rolling.

Now, this is an interesting point, as some have suggested that this might perhaps be a way of preventing that sort of implosion. There have been those suggesting that Marchionne was dissatisfied with Arrivabene and had been planning to replace him with Binotto sooner rather than later, so it sounds as if this move has been planned for some time.

The relationship between Binotto and Arrivabene seems to have been strained because the latter knew the former was being lined up to replace him, and it sounds as if, over time, Arrivabene was also starting to antagonise some other senior engineers, as well as having a deteriorating relationship with the drivers. There was talk that Mercedes and Renault had both made approaches to Binotto given they knew about his dissatisfaction with Arrivabene, and it sounds as if, being faced with the choice of losing Binotto or losing Arrivabene, the former was judged to be far more valuable to the team than the latter.

This is Ferrari reverting back to the pre-Jean Todt practice of finding a scapegoat for a failure, sacking the scapegoat in a very public display of resolve and determination and making big statements about a major change wich will yield great results. I thought Ferrari was over this nonsense.

Faustus wrote:This is Ferrari reverting back to the pre-Jean Todt practice of finding a scapegoat for a failure, sacking the scapegoat in a very public display of resolve and determination and making big statements about a major change wich will yield great results. I thought Ferrari was over this nonsense.

They are Italian, they will never be over this nonsense. At the risk of sounding discriminatory, this is a thoroughly Italian way of doing things. Todt was able to change it precisely because he was a foreigner.

Waris wrote:

Faustus wrote:This is Ferrari reverting back to the pre-Jean Todt practice of finding a scapegoat for a failure, sacking the scapegoat in a very public display of resolve and determination and making big statements about a major change wich will yield great results. I thought Ferrari was over this nonsense.

They are Italian, they will never be over this nonsense. At the risk of sounding discriminatory, this is a thoroughly Italian way of doing things. Todt was able to change it precisely because he was a foreigner.

Then how did Schumi get his 5 titles with them? His own force of will or talent alone was enough?

Waris just said Todt was able to change the way things were done...

Waris wrote:

Faustus wrote:This is Ferrari reverting back to the pre-Jean Todt practice of finding a scapegoat for a failure, sacking the scapegoat in a very public display of resolve and determination and making big statements about a major change wich will yield great results. I thought Ferrari was over this nonsense.

They are Italian, they will never be over this nonsense. At the risk of sounding discriminatory, this is a thoroughly Italian way of doing things. Todt was able to change it precisely because he was a foreigner.

It's not discriminatory, it's just the way things work in Italy.

Marchionne was a wonderfully un-Italian person in that regard - part of the reason for his success with Fiat.

novitopoli wrote:

Waris wrote:

Faustus wrote:This is Ferrari reverting back to the pre-Jean Todt practice of finding a scapegoat for a failure, sacking the scapegoat in a very public display of resolve and determination and making big statements about a major change wich will yield great results. I thought Ferrari was over this nonsense.

They are Italian, they will never be over this nonsense. At the risk of sounding discriminatory, this is a thoroughly Italian way of doing things. Todt was able to change it precisely because he was a foreigner.

It's not discriminatory, it's just the way things work in Italy.

Marchionne was a wonderfully un-Italian person in that regard - part of the reason for his success with Fiat.

Yes, I forgot to add that. This was probably thanks to his Canadian upbringing. Marchionne was the kind of person Ferrari needed to turn them around -- indeed it was working. What a shame to lose him so soon.

I am, however, hopeful that Binotto, who has been at the team for many years and knows what he is doing on the technical side, can push the team forward. But it will depend on whether they give him the time and space to do his own thing instead of loading him with too many non-technical responsibilities.

How about Vettel not being the wonderboy Ferrari thought he was going to be and it's all gone pear shaped?

Arrivabene had a really great start in his role at Ferrari. And he kept it up and turned it into a great run during his time there.

What can I say about his departure? Never change a winning team?

It's a total shift in tone both internally and externally for Ferrari. Not only is the brooding Arrivabene gone but so too his loyal lieutenant Alberto Antonini, who headed up a comms department which behaved like a castle defending its walls at all costs. In his place comes the universally respected Silvia Hoffer Frangipane, formerly Alonso's PR at McLaren. It's not a senior management change but it's highly indicative of a tonal shift in how Ferrari perceives itself and how it wants to be perceived by others.

It wouldn't surprise me if Louis Camilleri disappeared and Stefano Domenicali made his way back to Maranello, this time as CEO. He would probably fit the mould of this 'new' Ferrari quite well.

Ferrari has a habit of beating itself up over mistakes and getting hung up on dissecting the blame, rather than acknowledging them but quickly shifting to the solution. Mercedes did the latter and it won them the championship in a year that the tide was going against them in the first half of the season.

There wasn't really much stability to protect when evaluating whether Arrivabene should be cast off. It sounds like most of the paddock rates Binotto quite highly, so giving Arrivabene the boot to keep him at Ferrari, rather than lose him to a rival, is probably the right call.

Personally I didn't muck like Arrivabene's personality, but he seemed perfectly capable at the very least. It genuinely looked like Ferrari were at least moving away from that self-destructive atmosphere of blame blame blame.

This seems like a repeat of five years ago. There's a clear talk of "things are going stable now and we're going forward", but why can I see in four years another string of firings and replacements and talk of a "New Ferrari".

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/141303/massa-ferrari-obligation-to-win-is-a-problem

Apologies for double-post, but just read this interesting article interviewing Massa about the situation at Ferrari. It's interesting to note that he says there was a serious tonal shift in Ferrari after Jean Todt left, and that he had been the stability that the team had needed whilst they were winning and doing well, which has been replaced by angst and self-deprecation since.

Obviously this is something that even the layman knows, but it's good that someone from within Ferrari for so long is at least articulating what has been assumed. The most damning thing for me is that Autosport points out this is the fourth team boss change in 11 years. Which obviously is an average of about every 3 years that they overhaul management and structure.