Why Ferrari doesn't need Adrian Newey

Adrian Newey has become the ultimate panacea for all Formula 1 teams, as if simply acquiring his services guarantees an endless stream of silverware, as sure as his absence condemns a squad to years in the competitive wilderness.

Ferrari does not have Newey on its side. And, given that team principal Marco Mattiacci and the man himself have downplayed the possibility of this happening, it doesn't seem likely it will any time soon.

Newey is, without question, one of the greatest technical minds motorsport has ever produced, worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with geniuses such as Colin Chapman. Any team would be improved by his presence. But two things are often overlooked.

Firstly, his presence at Red Bull is only half the equation. To get the best out of Newey, you don't simply give him a desk, let him get on with it and expect the magic to flow. At Red Bull, he has been allowed to construct the technical team in his own image, structuring it to harness his unique abilities and way of working. Many employers would bring him in for big money, then be too inflexible to make this approach work.

Secondly, and more importantly, there are other technical leaders who have proved themselves to high standards over recent years. And you can make a very strong case that Ferrari has the best of those.

James Allison only started work at Ferrari, officially as 'chassis technical director', last September. Amid the recent rumours about Newey, most overlooked that any assumption about the technical leadership being the sole problem at Maranello is foolish.

Allison and Newey have plenty in common, mainly a focus on aerodynamics © XPB

When Allison arrived, the die had been cast as far as the 2014 car was concerned. Asked during the Monaco GP weekend how much of the current F14 T was 'his', he shied away from the simplistic question, but did point out that around three quarters of the available development time had already elapsed. So this year's car is far from the on-track embodiment of Allison's technical directorship.

Allison's mandate was to turn around the underachieving Scuderia. Too often, this is portrayed as a few short, sharp changes that can make a team fulfil its potential. But this is a fanciful idea, akin to turning around a speeding juggernaut on the proverbial sixpence.

Lead times in F1 are long. Decisions made today won't fully bear fruit for several years. For example, when Ross Brawn was busy overhauling Mercedes, he brought in Aldo Costa and Geoff Willis in late 2011. When asked when he expected to reap the rewards of the new structure and appointments, he suggested it would partly be in '13 and fully this year. So it has proved.

By that measure, realistically Allison needs to be given a few years for his changes in working practices, structures and key recruitments - such as highly regarded ex-Lotus aero head Dirk de Beer - to live up to expectations.

This argument that time is needed could apply to any technical director. So why be so confident in Allison? For starters, his background does have plenty in common with Newey's. While F1's gold-standard technical boss was also a successful race engineer in the 1980s, his focus was always aerodynamics. In broad terms, there are two types of technical director - from an engineering background or from an aero grounding - and Allison is firmly in the second camp.

Any potential weak spots on the engineering side will be covered amply by Pat Fry, who was relegated to what is in status terms a junior role to Allison as engineering director, but who remains a key part of the Scuderia. To Ferrari's credit, instead of simply axing Fry and deeming him a failure after his stint of just under two and a half years as technical chief, he is still making a significant contribution. And rightly so.

While Allison's F1 experience does not stretch back as far as Newey's, the 46-year-old has been in the sport for a long time. He first came into grand prix racing as a junior aerodynamicist with Benetton in 1989, spending two years as head of aerodynamics at underfunded, multi-coloured Larrousse in 1993-94.

He then returned to Benetton before taking in a first stint with Ferrari from 1999-2005 and then returning to his old team in its Renault guise. So experience is not a problem.

He became technical director at Enstone when the team underwent a major restructuring following the enforced departure of Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds in the wake of the Singapore GP crash controversy and the takeover by Genii Capital.

This means he was the main architect of a period when the team consistently overachieved, even though there were question marks about resources and its long-term future. Aside from 2011, when Allison opted for a misguided forward-facing exhaust design (it started the season strongly, but quickly plateaued in terms of development potential, something compounded by windtunnel problems), it was a very successful period.

Kimi Raikkonen won two races for Lotus in Allison's cars © XPB

While his cars only won two races, with Kimi Raikkonen in Abu Dhabi 2012 and then Australia last year, Allison's stock rose very high during this period. Other than Red Bull, in terms of performance versus expectations, you could argue that Lotus was the most successful team for much of this time. No wonder so many teams, not just Ferrari, were after him.

The question is, can Ferrari be structured in such a way as to get the most of the abilities of its technical director? Allison comes up with plenty of ideas and has a reputation as an extremely hard worker, even by F1 standards. So with creativity apparently lacking in the team, he and de Beer can certainly be a force for good in providing that.

Most encouragingly, he appears to have the full support of Ferrari at a time when it might otherwise become trigger-happy. Allison has made plenty of changes to the organisation, no doubt aided by his knowledge of the team from his previous stint there, but it's an ongoing process.

"It's not a 'do-it-and-forget-it' thing, it's a 'do-it-and-keep-doing-it-and-then-do-it-some-more thing,'" he said when asked by AUTOSPORT in Monaco about progress in implementing the right structures and working practices.

"This is a sport that kills you if you're complacent. There's a significant amount of organisational change that's happened since I arrived, there will be more as we realise how to do things better in the future, and there will be more after that.

"I hope some of the really key foundations of what I'm trying to do were put in place some months ago and will pay off increasingly over time."

To its credit, Ferrari is being realistic about the time it will take to turn things around. And it recognises that the engine package is currently its most significant weakness, an area that a technical director such as Newey or Allison can only have limited influence over.

But in Allison, Ferrari potentially has someone of the calibre to prove in the coming years that there are other ways to succeed in F1 beyond signing Newey.

It's a big ask, and there is no guarantee of success, but there is hope for Maranello.