F1 | Stay at AlphaTauri: does Ferrari leave the door open?

Simone Resta ended his working relationship with Haas at the conclusion of the three-year contract that tied him to the American team. The engineer from Imola, therefore, is back in the availability of Ferrari, given that he had been “transferred” to the client team, but his price tag still belongs to Maranello.

Rewinding the thread, you will remember that Resta had returned to Gestion Sportiva, after an experience at Alfa Romeo as technical director, in the summer of 2019 without however finding an effective position in Mattia Binotto's staff.

The relationship between the two has never been particularly idyllic and in 2021, with the introduction of the Budget Cap in the financial regulations of F1, Ferrari found itself in the position of reducing the workforce to fall within the expected parameters, so the Cavallino had made a group of expert and capable technicians available to Haas who would become the nucleus that would design and develop the single-seaters of the American team in the base that had been set up in Maranello, in close contact with the Sports Management, to keep all of them active the synergies that the technical regulation granted.

Simone's exit, therefore, had been strategic: after the idea of ​​bringing him into the technical management of the Scuderia had failed due to Binotto's opposition, it was better not to leave a technician who had the global vision of a team free on the market. modern F1 single-seater.

The idea of ​​seeing him at work in the office next door (the building that houses Haas is the one that contains the simulator) in a client team seemed like the best solution, it's a shame that Haas' investments in making the most of the cooperation with Ferrari were not spent in the best way and the results that emerged were deficient, especially in the last year in which Gene's team ended the 2023 championship in last place in the Constructors' World Championship.

The VF-23, capable of brilliant performances in the flying lap, never found a good balance in the race with an exaggerated tire wear (in photocopy, moreover, with the SF-23), but the car, due to the presumed narrowness due to cost limits, it was never developed and the update package (a half new car) brought to Austin represented a clean break with the aerodynamic philosophy, effectively proposing a… blank sheet of paper.

The evolution of the Haas was a… bad copy of what will be the 2024 single-seater. With the layout constraints relating to the chassis and radiators they went to make a large investment to evaluate a different aerodynamic concept, despite knowing that the numbers would not have given great margins for improvement and in the awareness that the fine-tuning and development work would have to start from scratch. Was it worth it or would it have made more sense to evolve the known machine? The malicious ones claim that Haas carried out a sort of experiment that was also useful for Ferrari, to understand how far they could go with the 676 in the concepts used by Adrian Newey on the dominating Red Bull, without adopting some solutions from the RB19 such as the front pull rod and push suspensions rear rod.

The relationship with Haas was interrupted, preceding the exit of Gunther Steiner determined by the owner Gene Haas. Now the Imola coach returns to base and for the umpteenth time he will find himself at a crossroads in his career and will have some time to reflect since he still has holidays to work off.

But while waiting for Maranello to decide where to place Simone, it is said that he will not be reinstated in the Sports Management so as not to break a balance that has been laboriously found and which over time will undergo significant strengthening with the arrival of important players such as Loic Serra from Mercedes , the market for technicians would have moved.

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Laurent Mekies is the AlphaTauri team principal who joined from Ferrari

The current AlphaTauri remains in the sights of Racing Bull: it is true that the junior team is in the midst of a transformation and many figures are in the process of transferring from Bicester and Faenza to Milton Keynes, so there will be greater synergy with the Red Bull, but it is equally true that the Emilian has great experience in transferring technology from the top team to the client team.

Laurent Mekies, fresh AlphaTauri team principal, wouldn't buy it sight unseen, especially since Resta would also be able to bring along his right-hand man, Matteo Piraccini.