F1 News
Warning for Hamilton: 'He won't make Ferrari world champions overnight'
This week it was announced that Ferrari have made two high-profile recruitments from Mercedes, by signing Jerome d'Ambrosio as its deputy team principal, as well as Loic Serra as the head of chassis performance engineering. On the Sky Sports F1 podcast, the pundits discussed how team principal Fred Vasseur is beginning to build a team which could lead Ferrari to secure a world championship in 2025.
In February, it was announced that Ferrari had signed Lewis Hamilton from 2025. However, as the podcast hosts pointed out, there are a variety of key personnel making the move for the 2025 project.
"Hamilton alone is not going to make Ferrari world champions over night. They have to build the team in the way that, you rewind to the nineties and they did that around Michael Schumacher. Michael going on his own in 96 for example didn't suddently make them world champions. All of these other people move in to come and restructure the whole thing, and you'd have to say Fred Vasseur is doing an amazing job," Karun Chandhok said.
Is Adrian Newey still a possibility for the team?
Ferrari appeared to be the favourites to sign the designer who has formally announced that he is leaving Red Bull and available from 2025. As Chandhok suggested, no one is sure just yet whether it will happen though: "Whether they get Adrian Newey is still the big question mark that everyone's waiting to see how that unfolds. I genuinely believe what Adrian was saying to Martin [Brundle] in Miami, which is I think he is going to just have some time off and consider his options."
"Whether he finally goes there would be another story."
Nevertheless, Ferrari announced their signings of two key-personnel this week, including Serra who is "very highly rated in the engineering and hero team up at Mercedes," and d'Ambrosio, who "brings driving experience, but also, he brings management experience. He worked as a team principal in Formula E. He worked closely with Toto Wolff at Mercedes on various bits of pieces," too.
As Chandhok highlighted, Vasseur is beginning to build his team: "There is just so much to do at Ferrari as part of his project rehabilitation to make them world champions again. For Fred to get a breadth of people with experience within the team is a great move. I think what Fred Vasseur is done and doing is making Ferrari."