Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Arrivabene called for Ferrari design changes

Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene says he asked the team’s designers to make major changes to the 2015 car as soon as he took over the role.

Arrivabene replaced Marco Mattiacci as team principal at the end of last season, with Mattiacci himself having only replaced Stefano Domenicali earlier in 2014. Following his appointment, Arrivabene says he pushed Ferrari’s designers to make rapid adaptions to the SF15-T in order to try and get it to suit Kimi Raikkonen more.

Asked what the main reason is for Ferrari's improvement this season, Arrivebene replied: “It’s all.

“Initially it was the engine and now it’s still the engine because I want to say clearly that without the tokens that our president was able to get into the strategy meeting in December it was not possible for us to develop the engine.

“But afterwards, when you have a good engine, you need to have a good chassis, a good aero and so on. And I have to thank all the guys at Maranello, every single guy at Maranello, that they were able in three months not only to work on engine development but to work in every single part.

“I remember it was the 10^th or 12^th of December and I was asking Simone Resta, and Rory [Byrne], we were watching a picture of the car and I said what can you do to transfer the weight of the car a bit more in front? Because I said Kimi likes to feel the car in this way and Sebastian is more or less the same. They said we need six months. I said what can you do in three? They said we have to work day and night. I said OK, I’ll work together with you guys, come on.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.