2025 Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team

[JordanMugen]

Why didn't Frank Williams and Ron Dennis manage to keep Adrian Newey at Mclaren or Williams for 18 years?

Too much meddling in the technical department and/or overriding Newey, obviously.

Same as to why the Ferrari offer to Newey was unattractive.

Given a choice between Vasseur and Horner, surely it is logical for Scuderia Ferrari to offer Horner a contract.

As I say in another post above - everything is made easier if the car is good. That's the most fundamentally important part of F1. You get that part right, it makes it much easier to put the rest of the pieces into place.

And Horner had Newey, the GOAT, running the technical department his ENTIRE time as Team Principal.

So why didn't Arrivabene, Binotto and Vasseur produce the GOAT car then if it so simple?!

Surely they have the authority to sign the best technical staff in Formula One?!

If the blame is above them at the Ferrari board, then Ferrari board underperformance is just as untenable as Team Principal under performance.

To the contrary, the Ferrari car OFTEN had MAJOR setbacks -- 2014 disaster, 2020 disaster and so on and so forth. Somehow the Team Principal and/or Ferrari board is not responsible for this?! Surely not.

[JPower]

Given a choice between Vasseur and Horner, surely it is logical for Scuderia Ferrari to offer Horner a contract.

Absolutely. Elkann would be ignorant not to, at the very least, check Horner's temperature and talk over dinner.

People can run themselves in circles trying to deny why Horner to Ferrari could be legitimate, but I'm not going to.

[Seanspeed]

So why didn't Arrivabene, Binotto and Vasseur produce the GOAT car then if it so simple?!

Surely they have the authority to sign the best technical staff in Formula One?!

If the blame is above them at the Ferrari board, then Ferrari board underperformance is just as untenable as Team Principal under performance.

To the contrary, the Ferrari car OFTEN had MAJOR setbacks -- 2014 disaster, 2020 disaster and so on and so forth. Somehow the Team Principal and/or Ferrari board is not responsible for this?! Surely not.

Can you really not understand that Ferrari TP's did not have Adrian Newey heading their technical department and car designs for two decades? I'm really not sure what you're struggling to grasp about this argument when this is about how important and/or useful Christian Horner would be as TP at Ferrari.

I feel like you dont even believe in your own argument anymore. But you're gonna double down anyways.

Also, I do blame Ferrari for not doing whatever it took to sign Adrian Newey. I've been very open and consistent about that. But obviously there are practical problems with making that happen.

[Seanspeed]

Given a choice between Vasseur and Horner, surely it is logical for Scuderia Ferrari to offer Horner a contract.

Absolutely. Elkann would be ignorant not to, at the very least, check Horner's temperature and talk over dinner.

People can run themselves in circles trying to deny why Horner to Ferrari could be legitimate, but I'm not going to.

Nobody is running in circles except you, who can only point to Wikipedia results to demonstrate why Horner would be beneficial for Ferrari.

You've provided literally zero insight into what Horner would specifically bring to Ferrari and their unique problems and needs. All you can say is "He won a bunch of championships", while willfully disregarding the context behind why they won all those championships.

[dialtone]

Ferrari is not going to sign a TP that sent those text messages and destroyed a winning team like that in 1 season. Doesn’t matter how much winning happened in his past.

[pantherxxx]

Ferrari is not going to sign a TP that sent those text messages and destroyed a winning team like that in 1 season. Doesn’t matter how much winning happened in his past.

Nobody cares about those messages that aren't related to F1. Horner is a capable team leader, and he could finally bring Ferrari back to its former glory. Even before Red Bull, he built a dominant team in F3000 with Arden, which had previously been a backmarker.

[ScuderiaLeo]

"He could be the one to bring Ferrari back to its former glory"

- Said about every major pick up Ferrari has had for the past 15 years, somehow it hasn't happened yet. Every TP, driver, technical staff...

As Vasseur said, it's almost like the issue is the organization and not any one person...

[bluechris]

Come on guys, give it a rest. Horner has nothing as a person or in operations side with the freedom that he got in RB that will happen in Ferrari. We see this for many years now.
Why not give to Fred the same amount of freedom to do whatever he wants? This is not the Ferrari way with the goods and the bads that come with this.
I forgot to add the politics problem that will come with him, we are happy that Sainz family got sucked with their constant moaning and trying to influence things ...we don't need nothing like that.

[F1NAC]

Why didn't Frank Williams and Ron Dennis manage to keep Adrian Newey at Mclaren or Williams for 18 years?

Too much meddling in the technical department and/or overriding Newey, obviously.

Same as to why the Ferrari offer to Newey was unattractive.

Given a choice between Vasseur and Horner, surely it is logical for Scuderia Ferrari to offer Horner a contract.

As I say in another post above - everything is made easier if the car is good. That's the most fundamentally important part of F1. You get that part right, it makes it much easier to put the rest of the pieces into place.

And Horner had Newey, the GOAT, running the technical department his ENTIRE time as Team Principal.

So why didn't Arrivabene, Binotto and Vasseur produce the GOAT car then if it so simple?!

Surely they have the authority to sign the best technical staff in Formula One?!

If the blame is above them at the Ferrari board, then Ferrari board underperformance is just as untenable as Team Principal under performance.

To the contrary, the Ferrari car OFTEN had MAJOR setbacks -- 2014 disaster, 2020 disaster and so on and so forth. Somehow the Team Principal and/or Ferrari board is not responsible for this?! Surely not.

Horner was fully backed by Dietrich and board. Not the case in Ferrari

Ferrari is unique eco-system

[AR3-GP]

"He could be the one to bring Ferrari back to its former glory"

- Said about every major pick up Ferrari has had for the past 15 years, somehow it hasn't happened yet. Every TP, driver, technical staff...

Has Ferrari actually ever had a good team principal since Todt left? It looks like a perpetual wheel of mediocrity to me.

Domenicali: No experience winning anything.
Mattiaci: No experience in motorsport. So awful that the tifosi still don't acknowledge him or 2014...
Arrivabene: No experience in motorsport.
Mattio Binotto: the mediocrity from within.
and the latest one:



I don't know that Christian Horner is the answer, but I know that these other guys are not. Ferrari should actually hire a winner even if that will not be Christian Horner.

[djones]

It's too easy to blame the TP a lot of the time.

He will have budget constraints, investor restrictions, loads of staff he would like to replace but can't due to employment laws, etc.

There are probably 50+ key things he would like to change, but simply cannot for reasons out of his control.

It looked as if he was very much after Adrian at one stage. Indeed, I think that was part of the reason Hamilton came to Ferrari. At the end of the day, that loss to Aston will have primarily been down to money, specifically the Ferrari-approved budget for the deal not being high enough. That is not the fault of the TP if the business won't approve more money.

[SharkY]

I don't know that Christian Horner is the answer, but I know that these other guys are not. Ferrari should actually hire a winner even if that will not be Christian Horner.

Well, Horner wasn't a winner before he joined RBR. Neither was Toto. But these guys as well as Todt and Zak were given something no other Ferrari TP had: freedom from management. They could run the team as they liked. What makes you think, any of them would success with the constraints from up top?

And I'm unsure what this photo was supposed to prove. Fred so far has actually achieved to turn the operations of the team from horrific to good (heck, the pit stops are the best on the grid!).
It's the technical side that's lacking and Horner is yet to prove (well, he won't have that chance anymore), he can build a strong technical team without Newey.

IMHO changing the TP right now would just mean that Ferrari loses a few years for restructirizng into Horner's liking (if Elkann and Vigna allow for it at all).
Why not instead give Fred some freedom to act as he wants?

[deadhead]

Toto just piggy backed on Ross Brawn’s work and rode that wave while it lasted. It will be fascinating to see how they do during this next regulation cycle.

[pantherxxx]

Horner can bring back the winning culture to Ferrari that's needed. The last team principal of this caliber Ferrari had was Jean Todt.

Vasseur wasn't even Ferrari’s first choice when they signed him. Reports at the time (late 2022) indicated Ferrari explored other candidates, even Christian Horner and Andreas Seidl, before settling on Vasseur. He was seen as a safe, internal F1 candidate with a reputation for being pragmatic. However, he's not a technical visionary nor a ruthless operator like Toto Wolff or Horner. Ferrari essentially promoted a man who had overseen a midfield customer team (Sauber/Alfa Romeo) without major breakthroughs.

Christian Horner is not just a team principal, he’s a proven builder of winning organizations. Starting with Arden in F3000, he didn’t just run a team, he made it dominant. Dietrich Mateschitz saw in Horner what Ferrari desperately needs: someone who knows how to win, not just manage.

If Ferrari wants to end their drought, they need a Jean Todt 2.0, and Horner might be the only person in the paddock today who fits that profile.

[Waz]

Horner can bring back the winning culture to Ferrari that's needed. The last team principal of this caliber Ferrari had was Jean Todt. Vasseur is not a genius, and he wasn't even the first choice, when Ferrari signed him, just there was no one else to replace Binotto, so they brought in the head of the client team.

Yip, I am sure there were rumors that Horner was given a call by Elkann.

While it's true that Horner had Newey taking care of the technical side, it was never entirely Newey just running the show there.

It also overlooks that Horner created a culture of excellent everything. They were a well oiled machine on every level.

And that's what Ferrari has lacked for a long time. Operations and strategies until a year ago were shambolic on catastrophic level.

Credit to Vasseur for turning that around after showing Mekies and Rueda the way out.

Unfortunately the technical team was weakened twice in short succession, which is how SF24 became a disappointing SF-25. But it's disingenuous to suggest that all Ferrari problems lie with the car.

Sometimes they do. But they also produce competitive cars regularly enough that are under utilized through poor operations.