Ferrari to announce former Mercedes key figure as Technical Director, according to reports

It is being reported that Ferrari might announce former Mercedes key figure Loic Serra as their new technical director to replace Enrico Cardile. The Italian team has been going through a major operational shift since the beginning of the season and has let go of some of the mainstays in Maranello for the 2025 season.

Earlier in the year, Ferrari announced that Serra would join as the Head of Chassis Performance Engineering, along with Jerome d'Ambrasio, the Deputy Team Principal. In their official announcement for Serra, the Italian team wrote on its official website:

"Loic Serra takes on the role of Head of Chassis Performance Engineering, reporting to Enrico Cardile, and overseeing various areas in Maranello, including Track Engineering, Aero Development, Aero Operations, and Vehicle Performance."

However, Cardile left his role as technical director of the Ferrari F1 team a couple of months ago to become the new Chief Technical Director at Aston Martin F1 next year.

It is now being reported by Formu1a.uno, that along with his new role as Head of Chassis Performance Engineer, the former Mercedes man Serra might also take up Cardile's role of Technical Director of Ferrari when he joins the team in October 2024. The role of interim technical director is currently held by team principal Frederic Vasseur.

Neither Serra nor Ferrari have made any announcement on the former taking on the role of Technical Director.

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Ferrari team boss gives his take on the development plan for the rest of the 2024 season

Frederic Vasseur stated that the team had to overcome the issue of bouncing that emerged following its Spain upgrade to restore the confidence of its drivers for the remainder of the 2024 season.

Speaking with RacingNews365, the Frenchman said:

“I think that we have the same regulation for four years. And we have a kind of asymptote of performance. It’s more and more difficult to chase the last tenth of seconds, we are a bit more at the limit. It’s true for everybody.

“We have to police ourselves from the fact that bouncing is key. It’s not just a matter of performance, but it’s mainly a matter of confidence of the drivers. If you gain one-tenth due to downforce, then you are losing three-tenths by the confidence of the drivers or the consistency of the drivers.”

Due to complications with their last upgrade package in Barcelona, Ferrari has lost a lot of ground to rivals McLaren and Mercedes, performance-wise, in the championship battle, though it still holds on to P3 in the constructor's championship approaching the end of the summer break.

The Italian team has scored 365 points from 14 races and three Sprints, which includes one race win each, in Monaco and Melbourne from its drivers.