Romain Grosjean, Haas, Monza, 2020

More Ferrari staff to join separate Haas division working on 2022 car

2021 F1 season

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Ferrari has confirmed more of its technical staff will follow Simone Resta to the new customer division which will work on Haas’s car for the 2022 F1 season.

Resta’s new role in charge of Haas’s technical programme was confirmed earlier this month. As revealed by RaceFans Ferrari’s new customer division will be based at Maranello but kept separate from its F1 team to ensure compliance with the rules.

Speaking to media last week, team principal Mattia Binotto insisted the relationship between the two teams will remain one of supplier and customer.

“At first they are customers,” he said in response to a question from RaceFans. “I think that’s straightforward and obvious. We are supplying them power unit and gearbox for the next seasons, as we did in the past.”

Haas has previously relied on Dallara to supply services and parts not obtained from Ferrari. Next year Ferrari’s new division will take over more development work on Haas’s 2022 car, as it seeks to redeploy staff from its F1 team as a result of the incoming budget cap.

“Some of our people, a few people, will join their team,” said Binotto. “I think that’s a great opportunity for them because by doing that they can reinforce their technical organisation. That’s something which was necessary for us because we have to reduce our organisation of today to fulfil what are the limitations of the budget cap.”

Revealed: How Schumacher and Resta fit into Ferrari’s new-era customer team model at Haas
“Those persons will be in Maranello in a completely separate building to Scuderia Ferrari so they will not have access to the Scuderia Ferrari building,” he added.

Ferrari Driver Academy member Mick Schumacher will also join Haas for next year. However Binotto insisted there will be no deeper co-operation between the two.

“Still, obviously, Haas is a fully independent team compared to Ferrari,” he said. “It is not a junior team, we are not exchanging information beyond what’s possible per regulations. So it’s a completely different organisation, independent to Ferrari.

“But today, if I may choose and I have to reduce my organisation, I’m certainly more happy to know that those guys are joining Haas and reinforcing their team instead of being simply on the market and available to [join] whatever other team. So that’s certainly the way we are looking the collaboration.

“Mick Schumacher will be one of the the drivers of Haas next year. That for us is a great opportunity showing the strength and collaboration we’ve got.”

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30 comments on “More Ferrari staff to join separate Haas division working on 2022 car”

  1. I guess this is how Ferrari are going to cheat (again) to get around the financial caps in 2021

    1. Is Red Bull cheating too?

  2. A way to circumvent the aero development restrictions?

    1. Probably not @minilemm. Rather a way to use all the people they have by providing the work for Haas.

      As Dieter Rencken mentioned in the article earlier this month, they cannot really fire anyone – labour laws, and on top a stop on being able to lay off staff due to COVID-19 for a few more months on top, make it hard to do that. If even they had wanted.

      But they need to get staff off the Ferrari payroll to fit into the budget cap, so this offers a way to do that. For Haas, it will probably be about the same service with having their cars manufactured externally at Ferrari vs. Dalarra previously. But the people now count towards Haas’ budget, not Ferrari.

      1. It could even be that having them count towards Haas’ budget and sort of being on their payroll and working on parts that are sourced from Ferrari/parts that have to integrate with what components they got from Ferrari, it is not just simpler to move forward from a technical point of view, but also in administration proving what their budget actually effectively is. After all, Ferrari accounting has to be on top of it (while Dallara would have to figure it out just for Haas) for themselves anyway.

      2. Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
        22nd December 2020, 14:08

        I’ve never been a fan of the budget cap due to its impracticality and at first this seems like a prime example of an unintended consequence. However on second thoughts, if this make Haas more competitive, then the consequence, intended or otherwise is a good one. Perhaps I’m coming around to the budget cap.

        1. I guess that’d the primary reason for it, yeah. But if I were Ferrari I would look for every possible benefit for such a move, and maybe that’d include designing some if those parts over at Haas altogether instead of doing it under Ferrari budget/restrictions.
          And then maybe the street starts going two ways rather than one.

    2. I think there’s more to that than just outsourcing manpower in order to get more time in the wind tunnel or circumvent the budget cap.
      As far as I know, Haas bought the former facilities of Marussia/Manor in England, after the team failed to complete the last rounds of the 2014 season.
      This could be Ferrari’s chance to finally be able to hire talented engineers from the UK, without them having to move to Italy.

      1. @srga91 whilst they did buy a former facility from Marussia in Banbury, Haas does have staff dispersed over multiple locations. They have some staff who are on secondment at both Ferrari and Dallara, and they also have some staff based in Brussels as that is the main centre of Haas’s wider industrial production facilities in Europe.

        The Banbury factory is a moderate size – about 3,500 square metres – which Haas mainly use as a support facility for their operations in Europe: in particular, I believe that they have used it to refurbish their cars when they are being brought back from races for maintenance.

        However, I am not sure that Haas have many design staff there right now – most of their design staff are on secondment at Dallara or Ferrari, which is part of the reason why it works so well for Ferrari to shift more of their staff into the Haas design team, with a handful of staff in the USA as well. We also know in the past that, when Barnard was working for Ferrari, they were prepared to set up a team in the UK – Barnard’s Guildford Technical Office – so it’s not as if Ferrari couldn’t do that itself.

        That said, some have questioned whether Ferrari’s decision to set up that technical office was the best long term decision – whilst Barnard argued that it removed him from the politics and media pressure in Italy, there were those who commented that it also fractured Ferrari’s design team and created internal divisions between the UK and Italian staff that became more problematic over time. Even with improvements in communication technology since then, I could still see that being as much of a problem for Ferrari, or any other team, as it was back then.

  3. First a pink Merc, now a black & white ‘Fazazz’?? ;-)

  4. A new variant of Red/Tauri. Expect the same model over at Merc/Martin. Just the expected side effect of budget caps.

    1. Agree. With the development token system for next season and budget caps getting tighter, the big teams have to find a way around the legal framework. Having Ferrari engineers in Haas next season means they get to run their extra experiments in the wind tunnel etc. with Haas and basically use them as a team to drive their A team development. The more Binotto stresses that there’s no exchange of information outside of the regulations, the more evident it becomes that there is going to be information exchanged.

      As you mentioned, Red Bull – Alpha , Mercedes – Aston Martin and Ferrari with Haas & Alfa are all going to have similar working relationships. Renault looks like the team that will lose out the most in this situation.

      I think Ferrari will make the most of this partnership. If there’s any team on the grid that can perfect cheating… it’s got to be the red team.

      1. @todfod If there’s any team that has perfected the art of cheating, it’s Team Enstone.

        It’s gotten to the point to even a minor gain made by Ferrari is considered suspicious (like in Portimao). I’m starting to wonder if it’s because of the non-Britishness of Ferrari, which makes them unapproachable by English-speaking media, which we are most exposed to, and makes us think that the vilest people run this team. The fact that people respect Ross Brawn, Ron Dennis and Patrick Head, people who have had their fair share of controversies, but think Binotto after 2 years as a Team Principal is somewhere between a clown and the devil’s spawn is…yeah I have no words.

        1. I think there was plenty of hatred for Ron Dennis in his day :-)

        2. @wsrgo
          I think I can safely say that speaking a language other than English is not a reason for me to suspect Ferrari.. Considering I come from a non English speak country myself.

          I think my suspicions arise from the fact that they just pulled the biggest cheat in recent history with their engine and manged to get the FIA to keep the details secret.

          The Enstone squad and cheating?? Are you referring to what? The Mass damper that was deemed legal and then banned to give Ferrari a fighting chance?

          1. @todfod Fuel filter removal, Option 13 Launch Control, Silverstone DSQ controversy all in 1994. They were found guilty in Spygate in 2007. Also minor ones like the brake bias adjuster in 2019.

            And can we ever forget Crashgate.

          2. @wsrgo on the other hand, there are questions over whether the Silverstone disqualification in 1994 was legal, as it has been pointed out that there were other drivers who also overtook their rivals on that very same formation lap – in this case, Hakkinen overtook Alesi during the same formation lap on the run into Copse corner, and stayed ahead of him for at least that corner.

            It was also pointed out, both at the time and since then, that the stewards themselves technically broke the rules as well. The sporting regulations at the time explicitly stated that the stewards had to give notification to the team within 15 minutes of the penalty being issued – to quote the rules from 1994:
            “164. Should the stewards decide to impose a time penalty, the following procedure shall apply:
            a) The stewards shall, no later than fifteen minutes after the occurrence of the Incident, notify the relevant competitor of the time penalty which has been imposed.”

            However, the time stamp that was on the notification sent to Benetton showed that there was a 27 minute gap between the offence taking place and the stewards then notifying the team that they would apply the 5 second stop and go penalty. Under the rules at the time, the stewards broke the sporting regulations themselves by not notifying the team within 15 minutes – in 1998, the stewards then were forced to rescind their penalty on Schumacher because they made the same mistake (notifying the team 6 minutes later than they should have), not to making other mistakes as well.

            It’s also worth noting that Head has suggested that there was an element of dubious behaviour on the part of Williams and Hill – he has said that Williams suspected Benetton were more marginal on cooling than they were, and that they wanted Hill to drive very slow formation laps to try and make Schumacher’s engine overheat and fail.

            It’s worth noting that other teams were not exactly squeaky clean in 1994 either, and Ferrari were in fact one such team. Charlie Whiting was directly involved in uncovering that trick by making the audio recordings that demonstrated Ferrari were using a variable rev limiter to reduce wheelspin (they would lower the limiter when the driver engaged 1st or 2nd gear, making it very difficult for a driver to apply too much throttle and have wheelspin).

            Ferrari basically only got out of it because, with the drivers seeing what Whiting was doing and warning the team, the team immediately went to Whiting and offered to remove that device from the car. It basically resulted in the FIA going “OK, we will let you get away with trying that trick for being honest and promising not to do it again”.

      2. So Ferrari will be doing something other teams have been doing for years, like RB/AT and Mercedes/Force India, but Ferrari is the master of cheating… I can’t even…

      3. I think Ferrari will make the most of this partnership. If there’s any team on the grid that can perfect cheating… it’s got to be the red team.

        A myth… just like Ferrari. People still talk about 2002 Austria, but 2018 Russia is obviously worse, simply because it’s more blunt. At least Ferrari had the decency to try to hide it and not rub it in our faces like it’s a normal thing to do!

        1. @mg1982 the 2002 Austrian GP team orders were extremely blunt at the time – the official statement at the time from the World Motorsport Council was very critical of what they called the “deplorable manner” in which Ferrari ordered Barrichello to get out of the way – and also came at a time when Schumacher was, proportionally, a lot further ahead in the WDC than Hamilton was in 2018 (Schumacher’s lead was 45% larger than Hamilton’s lead was in the WDC at the time).

          Also, it was not just the 2002 Austrian GP, but the way that Ferrari behaved afterwards – not least the fact that Ferrari then used team orders to give Barrichello a victory back at the 2002 European GP in a way that made people think they were mocking the sport, particularly as they ended up undermining most of the arguments they had put forward at the Austrian GP for imposing team orders in that race.

  5. 2022 Haas: Developed by Ferrari, Manufactured by Ferrari, Assembled by Haas trackside team. Driven by a Ferrari junior driver. Paid for by Uralkali.

    1. Classic!!!
      Does make MS’s drive even more political.

  6. With the right name and zero Grand Prix racing experience Team Ferrari will step up and bring staff to support the Haas project. The help is needed for sure but only if your drivers name is Schumacher.
    Kind of a slap in the face of Roman and Kevin. Lose your job for the promise of a big name with Ferrari support. Nothing but the art and science of Grand Prix racing. Sounds like the pressure on the other new hire is growing out of control. Now damaged goods even though he has no time in this F1 car. How can he survive?
    As for Mick his name brings opportunity that others have to pay for. If he is the real deal then two years from now a front line drive is the reward. Haas is haas but will get better with the Schumacher name on board

  7. Meanwhile no help in sight for Alfa Sauber, and no dev work in the pipeline. Just more pointless practice slots for Kubica.

  8. Damn, just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse for HAAS – they now have the engineers responsible for the worst Ferrari in decades having input to their car!

    1. @joeypropane that’s gold. :)

      Made my morning start off with a laugh – thanks.

  9. And don’t leave Alfa Romeo to rot.

  10. This is obviously good news for Haas, and to a lesser extent good news for the surplus employees at Ferrari. I’m left wondering whether Dallara designed the 2022 chassis or if it was done by Haas-Ferrari.
    When one considers the most likely scenario for Brexit is to end up with a degree of belligerence between the UK and Europe, meaning lots of paper work and maybe several days waiting at the port for every team wanting to attend a European GP, then having an Italian division that can manufacture and stockpile parts for the team might become quite an asset.

  11. Gene must be proud of his accomplishments. I wonder if he’s at all related to the Avocado.

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