Recent reports in the Italian press indicate that the Ferrari F1 Team could undergo a major senior management reshuffle in the coming months with technical director James Allison tipped as a potential successor to team principal Maurizio Arrivabene.
It was not long ago that Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne replaced long-standing chairman Luca di Montezemolo in the light of a dismal 2014 campaign.
Arrivabene arrived a couple of months later to take over from Marco Mattiacci, who had been appointed as team principal following Stefano Domenicali’s surprise resignation in April 2014.
Allison came from Lotus in mid-2013, which means his influence on car design only truly started to show on last year’s grand SF15-T. Under his technical stewardship and Arrivabene’s colourful leadership, Ferrari managed to bounce back to win three grands prix in 2015.
In the wake of this return to form, Marchionne set high goals for the Scuderia this year, saying on the eve of the current season that another title-less campaign would be “a tragedy”.
Despite taking another step in terms of performance over the winter, Ferrari has yet to enjoy a clean race weekend in 2016 amidst reliability issues and on-track incidents, and is already trailing Mercedes by 81 points in the Constructors championships.
Meanwhile, the highest-placed Maranello driver in the standings, Kimi Raikkonen, is 55 points behind runaway championship leader Nico Rosberg, with team-mate Sebastian Vettel another 12 adrift.
A report in Autosprint initially suggested that Ferrari looked to re-hire former chief designer Aldo Costa, who parted ways with the Scuderia in 2011 and joined Mercedes as engineering director, to fill Allison’s position should the British engineer step up to take the reins.
However, Motorsport.com claims that Costa is not interested in returning to Maranello. Instead, Ferrari would be keen to poach Toro Rosso’s James Key, whose work on the recent STR chassis has not got unnoticed.
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