Stefano Domenicali has been head of Ferrari since 2008 until just this week when he stepped down as the F1 boss. Domenicali had been within the Ferrari organization for 23 years in total. Ferrari has been struggling with the new chassis over the opening three races registering just two fourth place finishes and a ninth for Fernando Alonso. His counterpart Kimi Raikkonen has managed to finish in the points only two out of the three races with seventh being his highest finish. Neither driver has been to the podium yet nor to be quite honest has either car looked podium capable thus far.
Stefano Domenicali said that he is making this move to shake things up within the organization, and a shakeup is badly needed. Poor speed, and under performance in the turns has them wearing out tyres left and right at each race and unable to make up for it with straight line speed. Problems persisted when the Ferrari team was testing at Bahrain this week after the Bahrain Grand Prix. Only 12 laps were done on day two before it was discovered that the chassis was damaged, most likely from the race or practice the week before, and the session was over. Domenicali has taken the blame for the poor start to 2014 and we’ll see if his replacement can get things pointed the right direction.
Marco Mattiacci will be that replacement. Luca Di Montezemolo, Ferrari President, thinks that Mattiacci will be perfect to get a new perspective on the problems plaguing the F1 team. Mattiacci worked on the sports car end of things with Ferrari and hopes are that he will help Ferrari maximize its efforts between the road car side of things and with the racing side.
He’s a bright young manager for Ferrari without any real motorsports experience and hopefully for Alonso and Raikkonen a fresh set of eyes on their current predicament will help right the ship going forward. We’ll get a firsthand look this weekend as Mattiacci will be in the pit lane for Ferrari at the Chinese Grand Prix.
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