Ferrari's Marco Mattiacci confident three-year masterplan will return title to Maranello |
Mattiacci, installed as Ferrari’s new team boss in April after predecessor Stefano Domenicali resigned, has been charged with restructuring the F1 operation at Maranello in order to eventually overhaul the sport’s current standard-bearers Mercedes and Red Bull.
In an exclusive interview with Sky Sports F1, Mattiacci expressed confidence that his evolving plan – which has already resulted in changes to their underperforming engine department – will deliver the desired results in time.
“We are basically setting up a strategy that is going to be for the next three years and that is probably for sure going to see Ferrari go back to the top in Formula 1 and succeed,” Mattiacci, who headed up Ferrari’s North American roadcar division before being switched to F1, told Martin Brundle. “But eventually [we want] a way to organise the team operation-wise that is quite different from what it is today.”
“I think Ferrari is one of the most impressive, iconic franchises in the world - that is, so many opportunities that lie ahead of us that I think we are going to create impressive value. But first is to go back to winning the World Championship.”
Although Ferrari, the only team which has an F1 lineage which dates back to the first year of the World Championship in 1950, are the sport’s most successful team in history, Mattiacci warned it would still take the team in its current guise time to achieve the kind of success the company has in the past become accustomed to.
“You have seen how long it took for Mercedes to arrive here. You have seen how long it took Red Bull to achieve what it achieved,” he pointed out.
“I guess we are starting from quite a strong baseline – we have, as I said at the beginning, important assets, we have a tradition. Having said that, we need to improve some kind of strategy, some kind of bias to the way we work. [To remove] some kind of short-term approach to the racing activities, to the technical activities.
“So, as I said, it is going to take a while. This not soccer: you don’t change the coach and buy two players and you are going to win next year’s championship.”