Costa Relinquishes Role in Ferrari Reshuffle at LinesMaker

Costa Relinquishes Role in Ferrari Reshuffle

Costa has relin­quished his role as Fer­rari tech­ni­cal director

Fer­rari have restruc­tured their tech­ni­cal team after a dis­ap­point­ing start to the For­mula 1 season.

Aldo Costa has stepped down as tech­ni­cal direc­tor “to take on new respon­si­bil­i­ties within the company”.

Pat Fry becomes the direc­tor for the chas­sis depart­ment with Cor­rado Lan­zone in charge of production.

Red Bull’s Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel empha­sised just how far behind Fer­rari are by lap­ping Fer­nando Alonso on his way to vic­tory in Sunday’s Span­ish Grand Prix.

Vet­tel won his fourth race of the sea­son, while Alonso, who fin­ished fifth at the Cir­cuit de Catalunya, is Ferrari’s clos­est chal­lenger in fifth place, 67 points adrift.

A state­ment from Fer­rari read: “Scud­e­ria Fer­rari Marl­boro announces that, as from today, Aldo Costa relin­quishes his cur­rent posi­tion as tech­ni­cal direc­tor to take on new respon­si­bil­i­ties within the company.

“At the same time, the tech­ni­cal activ­ity has been restruc­tured in three areas: direc­tor for the chas­sis side is Pat Fry, pro­duc­tion is in the hands of Cor­rado Lan­zone, while engine and elec­tron­ics con­tin­ues with Luca Mar­morini. All three report directly to the team prin­ci­pal, Ste­fano Domenicali.”

Fry spent 18 years as chief engi­neer at McLaren before join­ing Fer­rari in July 2010 and was Costa’s deputy.

How­ever, he replaced Chris Dyer as head of race track engi­neer­ing in a new year reshuf­fle after Alonso failed to win the 2010 world championship.

Dyer was seen to be pay­ing the price for poor advice to Alonso in Abu Dhabi, when the Spaniard — lead­ing the stand­ings by eight points going into the final race — could only fin­ish seventh.

Ferrari’s lack of per­for­mance so far this year has already led to Domeni­cali, Costa and Fry fly­ing back to Italy after the Malaysian GP, instead of trav­el­ling to Shang­hai for the Chi­nese GP, in order to inves­ti­gate the problems.

Since then, Ferrari’s best result was third in Turkey and with Vet­tel claim­ing his fourth vic­tory out of the first five races of the sea­son in Spain, Domeni­cali admit­ted: “If Red Bull keep pro­gress­ing, then no doubt it [the title] will not be easy.”

The next race of the sea­son takes place in the streets of Monaco on Sun­day, with first prac­tice start­ing on Thurs­day at 0900 BST.

Related Posts:

• Fad­ing Title Hopes Worry Ferrari
• Yahoo! Sports’ Pascal-Hopkins Live Analysis
• Vitali Klitschko to Fight Tomasz Adamek in Poland
• Lloyd Excited About Lead­er­ship Role With Rams After Trade
• Kobayashi to Start From Sev­enth After Grid Reshuffle

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•