How will Ferrari fill its Enzo-inspired power vacuum?

When the first Ferrari, the 125 S prototype, was ready for its inaugural run in March 1947, the man who took the barely completed and bodywork-less car for a quick spin to the nearby village of Formigine and back to Maranello was Enzo Ferrari himself.

Today marks 30 years since Enzo's death at the age of 90. It's a reminder of an era where one individual could embody a whole team and have a unique, physical connection to the cars that bear their name. How much grand prix racing has changed in just those three decades, let alone the seven since a Ferrari first raced.

Ferrari, of course, was a driver first and, in his early days, foremost. Not only a race driver from 1919-31 who achieved a good number of minor successes, he was also an individual who would rarely let his chauffeur take the wheel because he wanted to do the work himself.

For Enzo, his race cars were everything. Famously, the automotive side of business was a means to achieving the end of competitive success, which makes it all the more remarkable that 'Ferrari' has become a byword for everything that is loved about road cars. Difficult as this might be for the Autosport reader to accept, Scuderia Ferrari is now a very distant second to the wider road car company in importance.

The standard question to ask on such anniversaries is something like, 'What would Enzo Ferrari have made of modern F1?' This could often be followed by a shaking of the head, along with a suggestion that everything has gone to the dogs, and an agreement that it's a good thing he's not here to see it all.

But to do so would be to miss the point of Ferrari. Yes, he was a purist, but above all he was a racer. You might argue he'd hate the current generation of ERS-assisted machinery, but history suggests he would have embraced it. After all, he was a devotee of atmospheric engines until such time as it became clear that turbocharging was the way to go. Even if there were initial resistance, which there probably wouldn't have been, if it made a Ferrari win it would be deemed a good thing.

It's true he wouldn't approve of the frozen engine formulas, in particular the spell from 2007-2013 when the 2.4-litre V8s only changed when the FIA gave express permission. And the idea of a silent power unit, such as used in Formula E, would have been completely alien to him.

Ferrari always saw the engine as the beating heart of the car - understandable for someone who grew up in the pioneering age when automobiles were basically glorified carts. So perhaps after those years in the recent past when engines were little more than performance-balanced components designed to make the car go (and, sometimes, to act as air pumps to give downforce) he might have revelled in the hybrids.

You might argue Enzo Ferrari would hate the current generation of ERS-assisted machinery, but history suggests he would have embraced it

After all, Ferrari didn't do badly out of engine formula changes in 1961 and '66. Perhaps he'd have seen it as a similar opportunity?

Ferrari always had tremendous foresight, particularly when it came to winning. One of the first to grasp the fact that team building could transform a race team, he was a legend of leadership. Not only did he have a knack for getting the right people in, but he also did deals with key technical partners, such as Shell and Weber, that would help make the cars go quicker.

Perhaps that kind of foresight would extend to understanding the potential of the new powertrains. Infamously, the Ferrari team started far too late on the 2014 cars both from an engine and chassis perspective - the legacy of Luca di Montezemolo, once Enzo's key man on the ground, demanding results now rather than laying the foundations for the future. Would Enzo have sensed the greater opportunity a year or two ahead?

It's tempting to dismiss that suggestion, but Ferrari had tremendous ambition and really could see a grander future than most were capable of. When he started the modern Ferrari after the Second World War - the second attempt to get Scuderia Ferrari up and running after pre-war success largely, but not exclusively, with Alfa Romeo security - he genuinely did see what it could become.

Most of the land that Ferrari currently stands on was owned by Enzo back then. This was always going to be more than just another tinpot hit-and-hope car company, of which there were many in that era.

But there's also every chance Ferrari's own tendency to play politics and exert absurd pressure on his people in his later years might have led to problems. Certainly, that love of manipulation and the delight in yielding power over people continues to course through the DNA of Ferrari.

Famously, Ferrari described himself as an 'agitator of men'. This, more than anything, is what makes you wonder if a Ferrari in his prime might have thrived as a team boss today.

It's a fatuous question, but the great individuals tend to adapt for their era. Does anyone really think Juan Manuel Fangio - incidentally, not one of Enzo's favourites - wouldn't have been just as successful given the same opportunities behind the wheel half a century later?

Grand prix teams are bigger than ever - even the small ones are almost unmanageably big. Turning them round takes years, and rather than lining up some key people and watching them go it's now a complex network of inter-relating departments and individuals that all add up to something. Too often, that something is less than the sum of its parts.

Modern Ferrari, certainly the one of recent years under the recently lost Sergio Marchionne, has actually done pretty well out of all this. While the final years of di Montezemolo in control of Scuderia Ferrari were ones of underachievement, under Marchionne the team has got its groove back. And this has happened by falling back on a few of Enzo's old tricks.

Enzo Ferrari was an autocratic figure, and his word was law. Marchionne had the same impact - to the point where senior personnel seemed scared to say anything for fear of incurring his ire.

While that seems counter-productive, it's difficult to argue too much with the outcome. But what it does make you wonder is what now follows with the new leadership in place.

When Enzo Ferrari died, his team went down before it went up. And while it would be wrong to suggest it triggered a slump, because 1988 was Ferrari's fifth season without a title, things did get worse.

From late 1990 until the middle of '94, it didn't win a race, by which time the foundations for the recovery had been laid by another great dictator - Jean Todt.

Some of the more negative habits of Enzo were exhibited in that period, with the loss of star driver Alain Prost in 1991. The official reason was that he compared the Ferrari 642 to a truck.

"Nobody wanted to know what happened," said Prost in an interview with Autosport five years ago. "There are people who do know, but it was more political. They had proposed to me to be the sporting director together with being a driver... it was really a political game."

And the truck comment, yes, Prost said "it was like a horrible truck to drive". But this was very clearly in the context of shock absorber problems that developed during the 1991 Japanese Grand Prix. Taking a comment out of context and using it to hang someone - that's the definition of politics.

But for all of the politics that have always ravaged it, Scuderia Ferrari has remained first and foremost a racing team. That is when Ferrari has been at its best. And that's the legacy Enzo gave it - the results mattered, more than anything.

Marchionne repeated some of the tricks beloved of Enzo. Threats of withdrawal from F1 were regularly made by Ferrari, and Marchionne continued that tradition in recent years. He also wasn't afraid of hanging big-name drivers out to dry - just look at his comments about Kimi Raikkonen.

First and foremost, though, Marchionne made Ferrari a reflection of his own outlook and attitudes as much as Enzo did in his day. The fact is, Ferrari has always thrived when it's had such a figure at the top, just as it did during Todt's era.

But when it comes to the legend that Ferrari is shrouded in - the myth he actively cultivated that makes it difficult to separate the fact from the fiction - there's nobody in the modern world that matches up to what Ferrari was.

Perhaps the closest modern F1 comes to an Enzo-like figure is Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz. That's almost a sacrilegious statement since, to use Lewis Hamilton's famous quote from 2011, Red Bull "are not a manufacturer, they are a drinks company".

But through his ownership of two teams - a fifth of the grid - and control of one of the calendar's most vibrant races in the Austrian Grand Prix, Mateschitz is hugely influential. He wields enormous power thanks to the fact that his cash underpins a big part of the F1 circus.

It would be impossible for a figure like Enzo Ferrari to rise up today

He appears more frequently in the paddock than Enzo - who was famously reclusive in his later years and spent his time in Maranello and Modena - but is not a regular, and speaks rarely to the press, usually a few selected journalists. He wields huge power, and while Helmut Marko tends to get all the stick for some of Red Bull's more brutal driver decisions, Mateschitz is often the architect.

Remember, ahead of the 2012 season Marko intended Toro Rosso would continue to run Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi. But Mateschitz, hearing that neither was seen by the main Red Bull team as a viable future option, forced the issue and they were replaced by Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniel Ricciardo.

But there's nothing Enzo-like to the mythology surrounding Mateschitz, there's no lore surrounding Red Bull's proprietor or the team itself. And it's fanciful to suggest Red Bull will have anything like the longevity as a grand prix car constructor than Ferrari did.

Beyond that, there are almost none of the old guard left. Frank Williams still holds the title of team principal at his eponymous team, but the 76-year old has long since cut back his grand prix attendance. He's the only one who owns a controlling stake in his team.

The rest are all employees and appointees, at best with a minority shareholding but beholden to the whims and wants at board level. That has many advantages, offering checks and balances and ensuring good business sense is applied, but it does tend to rip the heart out of a team.

It would be impossible for a figure like Enzo Ferrari to rise up today. He built up the most successful team in grand prix racing based on his own vision and excellence in team building, and wasn't just the leader of Ferrari. He was Ferrari.

And for all the changes, he remains so to this day. That's why, today, rather than condemning the world for having changed so much since the days when Enzo used to wait by the phone to issue his verdict on a race he had just watched on television, it's more instructive to consider how well he would have capitalised on the different opportunities of modern F1.

The answer, as it always is for individuals like this, is 'a lot'. That's what separates the great from the rest of us - the ability to make the most of their moment. And as Marchionne showed in recent years, the legacy of Enzo Ferrari's way of doing things can still echo successfully in F1.

No matter how big teams get, you still need a final decision to be taken. Perhaps Ferrari's recently installed leadership needs to look back at the example of Enzo for that success to continue.

Even three decades after his passing, when it comes to Scuderia Ferrari, the legacy of Enzo must still influence the famous team's path.