James Allison is considered by many to have made the difference at Ferrari following a successful tenure in Enstone – where he was considered the driving force that saw the team win races for the first time as an independent since the Renault era.
Yet, the Italian publication ‘Gazzetta dello Sport’ reports concern over the fact that Allison’s contract expires at the end of this year and it has not yet been renewed.
Allison responds that “I have a contract that binds me for several years to the company”, which presumably means Ferrari have a series of options to exercise the retention of the Englishman’s services.
That said, with under a year left to run on a star employees contract, it is hardly a resounding vote of confidence from the employer to keep on running it down in a business where the cycles are counted in years and not months. Even more interesting considering Ferrari have not yet returned to winning ways.
Allison, age 47, worked in Maranello during the Schumacher years (2000-04) and knows what it is to win and dominate Formula One. James is also aware of the high expectations of Ferrari and that failure is not tolerated. “I have always seen this as a good pressure, because it forces you to win”.
As the clock ticks by and the Ferrari race victories are as elusive as ever, the relentless search by the Scuderia for the magic bullet will continue – whether this be for the right driver or car designer.
I assume he and Kimi are going back to Lotus to kick Ferrari’s ass in 2016?
This is Ferrari, so it could be media bullshine or yet another chapter in their story of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, because of internal power struggles. Allison shouldn’t have a problem getting a top job in another team.
If Allison does go, I wonder who’s next to put his head between the lions jaws?
Aldo Costa?
This story is… shocking.
How does the saying goes…
“One man’s waste is another man’s treasure”…
Costa was given the boot for failing to build the car to topple the once dominate Redbull and now he’s responsible for designing the car everyone wants to dethrone.
I don’t see Mercedes letting Aldo Costa go to Ferrari. Maybe James Allison goes to Red Bull?
Maybe they re-approached Newey in a professional manner? Perhaps by 1) offering more money than he can say no to, or 2) not blabbing to the press the moment the handshake deal was made. I don’t think Ferrari would keep Alison and Newey, they aren’t a two rooster team.
Brawn?
God I hope not. Brawn is too good for this position. He needs to take over the helms of F1 as absolute CZAR. We need all teams and the FIA to sign an agreement stating they will follow the formula laid out by Brawn and he will craft the rule-set to take F1 into the next decade. Nothing short of this and we can kiss F1 goodbye within 5 years.
This needs to happen, although I’m not sure running F1 would be his thing?
So the first car Allison has really been in charge of has seen them go from 2014’s frankly pathetic performance to this year taking regular podiums, one win, and occasionally even out-qualifying a Merc, and I’m supposed to believe his head’s potentially on the chopping block? Sometimes I really can’t stand the bullshit of F1. This is either utter nonsense or Ferrari are utterly retarded.
Yeah. And this is not really “his car” either. They just revised last year’s car. He is yet to fully put together a car.
Who did not take up the option? I wonder if he wangs out himself – romantically because he feels tied with Kimi, but probably due to politics.
I read an article recently Yak that claims Ferraris solid 2nd place in F1 is more due to other teams failing to improve significantly rather than JA being the key to their current improvement this year. If the Skiddyrear could have won races last year, Fernando would have done, but they were so far off the pace there was no chance! Vettels win in Malaysia was apparently “staged” by Bernie Shekelstone and his crew to fool the fans into believing that maybe this years titles would actually involve a “fight” for them, but now everbody knows Mercedes are going to run away with both of them already. #:)
As a Vettel fan i have to agree, the only thing faker than his win in malaysia would be his performance in 2014. Unfortunately F1 is quite rigged and its a bit pathetic most fans take it at face value. The actual entertainment in F1 is knowing that everything is fake, EVERYTHING.
Only reason not to renew JA’s contract is because you have a Newey on the way.
I dunno what to think about these articles about Allison´s contract not being renewed the last days. They actually seems more like “click bates” due to lack of real news between races, (including this one here at TJ13), then a “real story”
The headline really should have ended with a “?”, shouldn´t it? 😉
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Anyways, (as Yak said above), it seems to me that people tend to forget that this years Ferrari isn´t really a “Allison car” but a kind of “hybrid” between of what the past engineering group had done for this year and what the group of engineers that Allison leads had time to do after the “original” 2015 car got thumbs down from the senior brass at Ferrari.
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On top of that, Allison is not really a designer but a coordinator. He has said on several occasions that he has not designed one single part of this car and that his main focus since he came back to Ferrari has been to firstly get the different design departments to cooperate better and then to point those in the right directions.
Which means that it´s not until the next year that we will be able to see how well Allison have lead his design group since he rejoined Ferrari.
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I think that Newey, who now mostly works on the design of a Americas Cup boat will return to F1 at full capacity if the so much talked about radical changes to the technical regulations in 2017 really happens, but at Red Bull Racing if so.
Just my “2 cents) 🙂
The Italian media appear to be expressing some concern over the matter… and it is not a question – but a fact at this moment in time.
It HAS not been extended and this is a big story in Italy.
The article itself is not misleading when read – and was the only English report of this story
Doh.. I just saw that it was what Duffy wrote that I should have referred to about this years car.. although I like Yak´s post too.. 🙂