JPBD1990 wrote: ↑25 Jan 2022, 14:02
Jolle wrote: ↑25 Jan 2022, 12:17
JPBD1990 wrote: ↑25 Jan 2022, 12:02
Oy vey. I’ve supported Ferrari since day dot, the first race I ever watched (spa 2005 when Schumacher and Sato collided). That is over half my life.
Even I get the feeling… do they ever learn? Politics will be the death of us. Instead of personal power or glory, I want them to do what’s best for the team. I don’t see that in decisions like inviting Horner in, seemingly only months after they declared they don’t want a ‘star’ type person at the top (this was when Allison left) and instead want to better integrate the team and foster better collaboration. Well…. That’s out the window now that Elkann’s (reportedly), and who next? Why not get rid of everyone and just try to hire the entire Mercedes’ factory at a single unit? Oh wait… it’s because nobody seems to want to join Ferrari (Horner, Seidl, rumours of Newey, etc), so best get on with the MF job and empower those we DO have to do their best. I don’t think you do that by having them constantly looking over their shoulder at who might replace them. Same sh** different day with Ferrari.
Well, that first race you watched was with people in charge of Ferrari that they “bought” a decade prior from other teams and had the same status as Horner and Seidl now. Brawn was one of the big people behind the Benneton succes and Todt put Peugeot on the map with Dakar, Le Mans and their entry in F1. John Bernard, Steve Nicols and Rory Burne (forgive my spelling of my names) were all highly successful at their previous teams and had no obvious link with Ferrari before they were hired. It was more, during the mid nineties. Buying an all-star team together.
It would be like getting Horner, Newey and Verstappen from RedBull, Seidl from McLaren and Gasly from AT.
Good point well made. Mine was only to ask, how long do you need to give a team to bring success? Not even the dream team of Todt, Brawn, Byrne, Schumacher, etc, could bring a championship immediately. It took them 5 seasons to bring it home.
This structure, under Binotto, has been in place for barely 4 seasons (I forget if he officially became team principal at the beginning of ‘18 or ‘19?). How long do they get before the conversation turns from a ‘growth’ story (like McLaren at the moment for example), to a ‘do or die’ scenario which seems a constant at Ferrari.
Well, they had some setbacks during those seasons like Schumacher breaking his leg plus internal struggles still (hey, it’s Ferrari!) and the whole bunch almost got fired a couple of times. It didn’t help that in the same period Daimler went full on with buying McLaren and getting their own all-stars on board (resulting in two titles).
We’ve seen in the past that it takes around 4-5 years of investment with the right people (Newey, Brawn) and the right money (Daimler, PMI or RedBull) to get a title. This has been the case for McLaren from 1980 to 1984, Williams from 1988 to 1992, Benneton from 1990 to 1994, Daimler from 1994 to 1998, Ferrari from 1996 to 2001, Redbull from 2004 to 2010 and Mercedes from 2010 to 2014.
The problem now with Ferrari is that their team doesn’t resemble one of those teams when they were building up to their succes. Ferrari today looks more like the period between Prost leaving and the all-star team starting. So much so that if you wanted to make a movie of those years (92,93,94 etc) you could cast Leclec and Sainz in the roles of Alesi and Berger and Fry would make an excellent Bernard.