Ferrari’s Lament – Ross Brawn is Back
Imagine if you had a strong group of people running a part of your company. In a power struggle, you pushed their leader out. The rest soon followed. What would your reaction be if some of them started reappearing at another competing company and appeared ready to produce results? Welcome to Ferrari’s lament.
The 2006 season was an ugly one at Ferrari. The team was strong, but not enough to beat Fernando Alonso and Renault. While the on track competition was intense, the off track intensity at Ferrari was far more so. Why? The head of Ferrari decided it was time to get a fresh start. This meant forcing Michael Schumacher out – a controversial move to say the least.
Michael Schumacher was brilliant and it is easy to forget that. When he came to Ferrari, he came to a team that even Luca di Montezemolo, the President of the company, admits was a joke. Schumacher was a great driver, but he was also a great manager. He forced out weak elements of the team and brought in strong elements from his old Benetton team. One of those people was Ross Brawn. With the kicking to the curb of Schumacher by di Motezemolo, it wasn’t long before Brawn, designer Rory Byrne and others were leaving the team.
Luca di Montezemolo had pulled off something of a bloodless revolution. The first post-Schumacher year saw Kimi Raikkonen take the title if only because McLaren Mercedes imploded as the team was caught cheating and Lewis Hamilton wrapped his hands firmly around his neck and squeezed tight over the last three races. Still, di Montezemolo had something to crow about and the “Schumacher team” was quickly forgotten.
Then 2008 happened. Cracks in the Ferrari team started to appear. Once one of the most reliable cars in the field, the 2008 version started to have issues with Felipe Massa famously suffering a blown engine just before winning in Turkey. On top of this, the decision making on pit road was horribly bad with the team appearing clueless on more than one occasion. In short, this looked less like the Schumacher Ferrari team and more like the disasters that raced in the early and mid 1990s.
2009 is a proving period for the current Ferrari team. The stress level has gone up remarkably in the last two weeks. Why? One of Schumacher’s boys is back from the abyss and is turning heads. Yes, Ross Brawn has taken the old Honda team, stuck his name on it and produced a car that appears as though it might be the class of the field for 2009.
So, what is Ferrari’s lament? Picture this. The season ends in Abu Dhabi. Jenson Button is beaming as he accepts congratulations from Lewis Hamilton on his driver’s championship. Next to him, Ross Brawn actually cracks a smile as the constructor’s championship trophy is handed to him on behalf of Brawn GP. You don’t think the possibility makes Luca di Montezemolo stay up at night? Trust me, it does.
Lemmy