Agreed. Lots of excuses and false promises since the end of 2010/beginning of 2011 but in the end the technical side of the team has failed in it's objectives.WhiteBlue wrote:Todt was the man responsible for the Ferrari triumphs of the past decade. Montezemolo tends to forget that. By chasing Todt away he has taken over the responsibility to the Tiffosi for Ferrari's success. There is a very high pressure now in the Italian press and Monte's head could roll unless he starts getting things right, which according to Alonso is not really happening. In Hungary Ferrari was not using all the new parts of the previous four or six weeks because they were not giving the performance enhancement they were expected to give. It means that aerodynamically Ferrari are still lost in the woods.
It was slightly different for Schumacher though because he saw progress every year from 1996-2002. Alonso has if anything seen the team go backwards from 2010-13. There certainly hasn't been any progress forwards.Montezemolo is feeling the pressure and he needs Alonso to keep his mouth shut about any negative trends in order to survive. That is probably a bit unfair, because Alonso only tells it as it is for him. But the Tiffosi would compare him to Schumacher in this regard. Michael never failed to praise the team even when the car was crap or mistakes were made at the pit wall. The accepted formula is "we will work even harder" if you are unhappy with the Ferrari performance. It can never be the fault of the red car. It has to be something that the Tiffosi see as bad luck but never the ineptitude of the red team.
Hiring Domenicalli was a mistake, but not for the reasons above. Look at the big names he's hired over the last few years - Fry, Bester, Sanchez and Bigois, whilst he fired his compatriot (and good friend) Aldo Costa.Monte's big mistake in my view was the selection of Domenicali for team principal. It means that an Italian is controlling the ratio of Italians and ex-pats at Ferrari. That will always tweak the internationality down and promote more Italian talent. Unfortunately Italian talent will simply not be of the quality that you find in England. All teams outside the English home county cluster have learned that the hard way over the past decades. Hiring Allison may be too little too late in a situation where Mercedes has cleared the market place of all hopeful tier two F1 engineers. Allison will need more of those because he cannot single handedly transform the chassis side of gestione sportiva into Red Bull and Newey beating form.
I think LDM should have hired Brawn. Domenicalli is too weak politically and is too slow to make the changes in order to bring Ferrari up to speed. Still i acknowledge that the successor of Todt was always going to have a hard time.
