Ferrari Team Principal Frederic Vasseur says AlphaTauri was “a bit aggressive” in announcing Laurent Mekies as its new boss, and says details of his exit need to be finalised.
AlphaTauri announced on Wednesday that current Ferrari Sporting Director Mekies will replace incumbent Franz Tost.
AlpahTauri did not set a start date for Mekies, outlining only that Tost will remain as Team Principal for the rest of 2023, prior to the Austrian holding a consultancy role in 2024.
Usually in such announcements official statements are co-ordinated between the respective parties but nothing was forthcoming from Ferrari.
Speaking in Azerbaijan on Thursday, Vasseur said: “First of all, I think it is a mega opportunity for Laurent, and considering that I have a very good relationship with him I won’t block Laurent for sure.
“If you speak about a timeline, I think Toro Rosso [AlphaTauri] was a bit aggressive in their press release; we have a long-term contract with Laurent, and now we have to discuss the details.”
Mekies is in Azerbaijan with Ferrari as usual this weekend and Vasseur added that as team boss he has to “protect Ferrari’s interests, because it’s Ferrari first, and it will always be Ferrari first – so we’ll have to discuss the conditions of his release.”
Vasseur nonetheless dispelled any notion of friction as “the relationship is very good” between the pair; “when he’ll leave, when he’ll move to Toro Rosso [AlphaTauri] will be discussed at the end of the collaboration.”
Mekies’ decision to move to AlphaTauri comes only a few weeks after head of vehicle concept David Sanchez left to take up a role within McLaren, effective from January 2024.
But Vasseur rejected any suggestion that Ferrari has been weakened by the situation.
“To lose two persons in an organization with more than 1000 people is not a drama and the power of the team is always more important than the power of the individuals,” he said.
“We have to keep this in mind, that the most important is the group, the group is there, we are recruiting massively but we are not communicating it – but we are recruiting massively.
“But we are doing it step by step, because you cannot put an organization in place in just two weeks, you know perfectly well the recruitment system in Formula 1.
“It’s quite long and painful, but I’m working on it. Don’t expect that one day we’ll have a completely new organization, it will be done step by step and we are putting it in place.”
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