Corporate Ferrari F1 team set to flop again and again – MPH

Mark Hughes

Laurent Mekies' departure represents the latest shift in the wake of Mattia Binotto's removal by Ferrari's corporate management

Mattia Binotto with John Elkann in Ferrari F1 pit garage

Elkann (right) is continuing the Scuderia's tendency towards corporate intervention

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Mark Hughes

The imminent departure of Laurent Mekies from his role as Ferrari’s sporting director was announced in a somewhat unconventional way. AlphaTauri earlier this week confirmed that Mekies would replace the retiring Franz Tost as team principal there from next season, but there was no accompanying release from Ferrari. In addition to the fact that Mekies is still working in his Ferrari role this weekend in Baku, it underlines the fact that the decision to leave was Mekies’, not Ferrari’s.

His departure follows the similar resignation after Bahrain of vehicle concept chief engineer David Sanchez, who is now serving out his gardening leave prior to filling a similar role at McLaren next year.

Both men were proteges of ousted boss Mattia Binotto. But while Binotto was effectively invited to leave, Sanchez and Mekies have chosen to go despite the team wishing to retain them. This is all just part of the turbulence resulting from the decision of company chairman John Elkann and CEO Benedetto Vigna to remove Binotto at the end of last season.

Laurent Mekies F1 Ferrari

Mekies is latest Ferrari team member to jump ship

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There are two schools of thought on this. One is that change was needed because the underlying problems at the team had remained for too long. That change had to be the team principal. The other is that while there were obvious shortfalls at the team, there was enough that was right about it to keep the faith with the man who’d been behind the positives.

Things were less than perfect when Jean Todt joined the team and in ’96 he proffered his resignation mid-season. His boss Luca di Montezemolo refused to accept it – and look what happened: within a few years it was the most successful F1 team in the sport’s history up to that time. Most of the personnel during that period were the very same people who’d served during the previous decade-and-a-half of under-achievement.

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The records set by Todt/Brawn/Schumacher-era Ferrari were eventually equalled or broken by Mercedes in the hybrid era, of course. Again, a big proportion of that team was peopled by those who’d been there during the previous decade of under-achievement in the BAR and Honda days just before it morphed into the one-off title-winning Brawn team. But in this example there was a change of leadership – first Ross Brawn who laid the foundations for all that was to come (just as he’d done with Todt at Ferrari) and subsequently Toto Wolff.

The appearance of Ross Brawn in each of these successes is significant. Yes, he understood very well what the pressure points were for a team in any given situation and was very effective at unblocking them. But that was just what he did. It was the way that he did it which was far more significant and which is so very relevant to Ferrari’s current problems. At both those teams he had absolute autonomy. The owners stipulated a budget and thereafter he would accept no interference. At Ferrari he did this in partnership with Todt (and to an extent Michael Schumacher), acting as a forcefield which kept any corporate interference at bay.

Michael Schumacher Ross Brawn Ferrari

Schumacher/Brawn era at Ferrari brought unprecedented success – helped by latter’s protection from corporate meddling

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Brawn has twice been courted by Ferrari to come back and apply his magic all over again. The most recent occasion came when he was already set to wind his career down. But the previous time, the only reason he said no was the corporate management not agreeing to his terms of autonomy. So, if this team is to be forever run by corporate management without the required specialised and highly intricate understanding of an F1 team, it will forever fall short of its vast potential.

Current team principal Frederic Vasseur is doubtless already feeling the mismatch between what he sees as necessary and what he is empowered to do. There has never in the history of F1 been a successful team run by a corporate management. The blueprint for success is right there in Ferrari’s own history and it’s likely going to be frustrating watching the team prove what is already obvious over and over again.

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