(Motorsports news) Renowned race director Laurent Mekies, who joins AlphaTauri as team principal, departs from the Ferrari. Formerly the head of car designs, David Sanchez has recently joined McLaren. Vasseur, the team owner, has hired Loic Serra, director of Mercedes performance. But he won’t begin working until 2025 because of the length of his contracts.
Vassuer has stated that more signing-related announcements would be made in the near future, but the former Renault and Sauber F1 boss believes he will “never accept” that the success of Ferrari depends on these newcomers. Before this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, Vasseur told a small group of reporters that he was “frustrated” by how long it takes to turn around a team’s fortunes: “The hiring procedure is really drawn out.
This has the effect of making the process of hiring new employees, who may do so over the course of a few months (we have people starting at the company on January 1, 2024, July 1, 2024, and others at the start of 2025), exceedingly lengthy. It’s a little frustrating in a way because you feel like you have two to four years of work ahead of you. However, if you don’t begin, you’ll never succeed. It implies that we must make progress. I believe we moved forward successfully.
Even if the deadlines were extended, he continued, Ferrari already had enough resources available and had enough “trust” in its current personnel to move up from its current position of fourth in the constructors’ points. All of the processes in Formula One are lengthy and filled with inertia, according to Vasseur. “You have to wait two or three years before seeing the results of this when you want to work with people.
“However, I will never agree that we must wait for these folks to show growth since I also have faith in the squad members we now have. “We need to get better, but we can work more effectively with what we have right now. To make the most of what we have, we must be focused. It is the following obstacle.
“I don’t want to delay any goals because that would send the wrong message and be the wrong motivation,” the speaker said. Vasseur stated that Ferrari’s strategy would not change even when its new employees are brought on board, claiming that there is no “before and after” in terms of its operational procedures, Vasseur concluded.
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