Can Ferrari F1 bosses remain patient as gap to pace-setters Mercedes persists?
There has been quite a bit of talk in the Italian media this week about the position of Ferrari technical director James Allison and the scrutiny from the top management of his performance. Leo Turrini, who writes the popular Profondo Rosso blog says that Allison’s contract has not yet been renewed; it’s due for renewal this summer. This comes as other Italian media outlets are reporting that he is ‘under scrutiny’. Clearly they are putting the heat on him – so what’s going on?
Allison left Lotus at the start of 2013 as he was disillusioned with the management of Gerard Lopez, Erix Lux and the Genii team. He had several offers, including McLaren, but chose Ferrari as the role of technical director there at a time when the Scuderia is rebuilding was ideal for his skills and experience level.
It’s generally agreed by people in the know in F1, especially the engineers, that Allison is the next best thing after Adrian Newey as a hands-on technical boss.
He has presided over a return to respectability for the Ferrari team, after the disaster of 2014 and there was a surge of optimism at the start of this season with a podium on debut for Sebastian Vettel and a win in Malaysia. It was impressive how quickly he had managed to get a new group of engineers and strategists to gel, given that there were so many new faces for 2015. However since Mercedes introduced their second engine of the season in June the Italian team has not only fallen back a little, it has also seen Williams move ahead in the last three races on performance.
Allison is a strong man, the son of a very senior British Royal Air Force officer, he has a disciplined bearing as well as a creative mind.
He was mentored by Ross Brawn at Benetton and then Ferrari in the Schumacher years and more recently Pat Symonds in the Renault Alonso years. He knows what it takes to win in F1.
At the same time, Ferrari itself has gone through a lot of upheaval. Allison signed with Luca Montezemolo as chairman and Stefano Domenicali as team principal; now Sergio Marchionne is chairman and Maurizio Arrivabene runs the race team. Whereas he signed for two men who were racers, he is now managed by two businessmen who most certainly are not racers. They judge success and failure on results, like a balance sheet. Arrivabene has to trust his technical director because he does not know enough about the technical and operational sport to make decisions on his own. Trust is fundamental to their future together and Arrivabene has been publicly supportive of Allison...
In the early races of the season, Ferrari was able to run a more aggressive mode on the power unit during Grands Prix, where Mercedes was very cautious and obliged its works team and customers to run much of the race on a safer mode for reliability. This allowed Vettel and the Saubers to some extent, to perform more strongly in races relative to the opposition.
In qualifying the Mercedes still has a ‘warp speed’ mode that allows it to hold a margin over everyone, but they had their vulnerability in races.
Since Mercedes introduced the second engine in Canada, they have been able to run a more aggressive mode during races while Ferrari has also had some small technical loopholes closed on fuel management, which it was exploiting early in the season. This is why Vettel has been left for dead in the opening stints in Canada, Austria and Silverstone.
These also happen to be circuits that suit the low drag Williams-Mercedes much better, so it’s no surprise that Ferrari has been where it has been; Raikkonen has looked lost and Vettel has had to fight for everything. Only his instinctive tactical nous salvaged a podium in Silverstone when it started to rain and he jumped the Williams cars for third.
Chassis-wise the massive upgrade package in Canada was arguably over-ambitious by Ferrari; so many new pieces to accommodate at once was a sign of aggressive intent, but also very hard to manage effectively.
Meanwhile Mercedes keeps just refining and improving its already virtually perfect chassis.
So this leads us to where we are today with some chilling notes coming out of Ferrari about their technical director.
Hungary is an important race, as Ferrari should go well there and Williams should not. A podium is again the minimum expectation and is more than achievable ...
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