With the 2023 season fast approaching, Ferrari have made a crucial team change ahead of next weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, with the hope being that they won’t suffer yet another strategic nightmare.
It was revealed by the Maranello-based team that they’ve replaced former head of strategy Inaki Rueda with Ravin Jain, who’ll feature on the pit wall this season in the lead strategic role for the Italians.
Rueda hasn’t been fired from the team, with him having simply been moved to another role within the outfit.
Rueda has been awarded a sporting role at the team’s base in Maranello, meaning he is well and truly out of the firing line.
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A Ferrari spokeswoman announced the switch, with the hope being that promoting Jain to the role will be a success.
Jain, an Oxford physics graduate, joined Ferrari in 2016, with him set to be under the ultimate pressure in 2023.
To have been given the role, he’s clearly regarded very highly at the team, suggesting that the switch can only be good news for the side.
Following his promotion into the lead strategist role, Jain must instantly deliver, in order to avoid an array of criticism.
Ferrari were bombarded with criticism from the media last season for their endless strategic mistakes, which cost Charles Leclerc in particular several victories.
With that in mind, new team principal Frederic Vasseur arguably was left with no choice but to introduce a new lead strategist, with one of Mattia Binotto’s downfalls having been failing to address the team’s strategic mistakes.
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Given that Vasseur wasn’t at Ferrari last season, he’s admitted that he’s had to “understand” what went wrong last season amongst the strategic department, with the Frenchman recognising that the issue is much bigger than “just the guy who is on the pit wall”.
“Very often, when you are speaking about strategy, it’s much more a matter of organisation than just the guy who is on the pit wall,” Vasseur said, as reported by Reuters.
“I’m trying to understand exactly what’s happened on every single mistake and what’s happened last year. And to try to know if it’s a matter of decision, if it’s a matter of organisation, or of communication.”