FEBRUARY 24, 2007

Further tweaks in Maranello

The Ferrari team has been making a few final changes to its management structure in recent days with the news that Nigel Stepney is leaving the race team and will now have the title of Head of Team Performance Development. This means that he will no longer attend the races - a major change for him after 13 years on the road. It is not clear what the new position will actually entail but he will be reporting to Luca Baldisseri, the head of the race and test teams.

Stepney's place on the race team will be taken by David Lloyd. The team has also named engineer Luigi Mazzola as the Performance Manager for all testing activities. Mazzola was race engineer to Alain Prost back in 1990 and remained a race engineer until the middle of 1992 when he was lured away to join Sauber, where he engineered JJ Lehto for a season before going back to Ferrari where he spent 1994 engineering Jean Alesi. He has been working on the test team since 1995.

It will be interesting to see whether Stepney's move will be a long-term one or whether he will depart the team when his contract runs out at the end of the season.