Scuderia Toro Rosso technical director Giorgio Ascanelli is officially “on holiday” at the moment. This would not be a surprise as a decent percentage of Europeans are currently having their summer holidays, although the weather across the northern part of the region has been anything but summery in recent weeks. The one discordant note in this explanation is that the F1 summer break does not come until after the Hungarian Grand Prix and it would be logical for the team’s technical director to take that break as factories shut down at that point. Thus, it is fair to say that something is going on in the small Italian team and Ascanelli may be off tending his garden, having been offered a job elsewhere. One could hazard a few guesses about where he might turn up in the future.
In passing, it should be noted that Ascanelli is big buddies with a bloke called Pat Fry.
And same engines to boot
Joe, I love your insight!
Your turn of phrase made me chuckle. “off tending his garden”
I don’t think many people would have gathered that from a simple early holiday. Brilliant!
Dan
Known in some companies as ‘gardening leave’ – shortly to be an ex-employee.
Subtle, Joe… Subtle.
What about being buddies with Aldo Costa, any chance of Mercedes?
It’s a long time since Mercedes hired a Technical Director. They could do with (another) one …
Mercedes already has like ten TDs on their books already! Even they wouldn’t contemplate another, surely.
They have a rota which shows them whose turn it is each day to polish their trophy.
And you can add that Giorgio started at Ferrari as a race engineer when John Barnard was at GTO, shortly after he banned Lambrusco during lunch time. Imagine the diplomatic incident back then! It could even be that John had a word or two to say before hiring Giorgio. He later had a stint at McLaren and am sure he must have had a chat with Pat about the good life around Maranello. I sincerely hope Giorgio was not fired because of the bad results so far this year.
you are right with the last sentence…
Joe,
We always hear / read about, speculation in the drivers market, so what do you hear about the engineers market, and people on garden leave now. Who is going where this year? Another thing not widely reported is the movement of sponsors from driver to team and from team to team, what are the big game changes this year in those two “grey markets” of change?
Super capable guy and molto simpatico with it… This would be a great move for Ferrari and demonstrate the old Faenza-Maranello ‘underground railway’ is still in working order!
It certainly pays to have friends in the right places… especially when said friend is technical director at someplace kinda nice
This is why we love you Joe!
If he does go back to Ferrari, it’ll be… what, his 3rd stint there? As far as senior F1 personnel, that’s pretty rare, I’d think.