According to Pitlane: @pitlanetalk 19m Luca di Montezemolo offered Adrian Newey £23m/year to work at Ferrari. Let's just say he didn't give "no" as a final answer. @pitlanetalk 10h Sky Sports saying Adrian Newey could still move to Ferrari after Horner refused to confirm they extended his contract So nothing is 100% sure...
+1 I think that would make him the highest paid guy in the history of the sport! Sure, he's damn good, but that's ridiculous! Surely there's have to be more sensible alternatives? Cheers, Ian
F1 needs to go back to unlimited testing. Nothing is better than watching a determined team like ferrari put in time and hard work. Id rather see the money spent this way than putting all our eggs in one basket and betting on one man.
the number is in GBP too...so it's around 28 million euro, or 38m Dollar. Pretty big number.... Short of buying Mercedes and Red Bull and making sure their cars don't work, I don't know. Maybe they can give Aldo Costa a phone call back asking if he pretty please with cherry on top wants to come? They have no alternative in building a long term super team. Alonso and Raikkonen both have a few years left, but building a super team with Newey and Vettel would be a good start. If only. One way to do it: Top team that finished higher the previous year gets fewest KM. Team that finished lowest gets the most. Team with the most KM can sell the KM's to the big budget teams for a substantial sum, increasing their personal budget and the other teams can test.
Not a bad idea, but I cannot see it taking off. Many would consider it wrong to handicap a winner - although it makes excellent racing in some lower series that have adopted it.
As good as Newey is, he would not be the cure-all for Ferrari. Their problems run deeper than car design.
He is the most valuable asset any team could ever buy. More than any driver. The key would be if he would be given complete freedom and support to design the car how he wants, or if he will have an Italian minefield to navigate. I suspect the latter... With that said Ferrari might be in real danger of no longer being the car every driver secretly (or publicly) aspires to drive if they don't turn this ship around. If they remain uncompetitive they will lose Alonso, and if the team becomes known as incapable of winning championships they will have a difficult time attracting the three or four drivers capable of winning championships.
Remember that in 2002 and 2004, when Ferrari was winning almost everything in sight, Newey was working for the other guys and not doing particularly well. Obviously Rory Byrne's designs were good enough, along with Ross Brawn's management and Michael Schumacher's driving. This is proof that Newey alone is not the answer.
In this no-testing environment he just might be. Ferraris biggest strength back then was testing endlessly with one of the best drivers in history. Now it has to be great right out of the box, before the driver even gets to touch it.
I agree. Newey may find it more difficult in Italy, than in the UK. Ferrari should bring back Brawn as team principal direct report to LDM....
The fact that LdM appointed a team principal who has no relevant experience in F1 says all any of us need to know about the logic and future prospects of the Scuderia. It defies belief that when the team is going through such an epic drought, and risking losing a driver of 'Freds' capabilities, they would choose to go down the road of almost guaranteeing further failure. Ferrari is lost, and they won't return to winning ways for quite some time without a wholesale change at the very top. Only the likes of Brawn and Newey could turn this ship around. It's going to be a painful decade being a Ferrari F1 fan... :-(
Im pretty sure that Marco Mattiacci has only been appointed to cover until someone else comes in, hopefully Brawn who is on 'fishing leave'.
newey as proven to be a lot more importante than any other driver....half of the grid would have won titles in his red bulls, so i believe he deserves more money than any other driver out there...
...then why get rid of Domenicali to begin with? It only smacks of desperation and incompetence. Stefano was doing the best he could with the tools his team was provided with. At least he understood how F1 works. I truly can't believe that the Scuderia has been reduced to such a shambles. It's no wonder that Alonso is desperate to leave (and don't doubt that he's desperate to leave....).
