Ferrari drops posturing for proactivity

"Progress is never achieved by endless repetition, but by breaking the chains of habit and the cycle of inertia. Progress is the result of us choosing not by-products of the past, but catalysts of a future."

Those were the words that Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne used in a letter he addressed to factory staff last year when he wrote about his vision for the future of the Maranello team. And while he might have been talking about the need for fresh management to make the most of a new era, his comments ring true for a different path that Ferrari has embarked upon more recently on the political front too.

It's one that culminated in that stunning F1 concept-car image that swept through the internet last week.

There was a time - both during the autocratic rule of its original founder and under Luca di Montezemolo - when Ferrari had a tried-and-tested revolutionary tactic it would unleash when it felt the need. Whenever those in the corridors of Maranello grew frustrated with the direction F1 was taking, it would threaten to shut up its grand prix shop and race elsewhere.

That is exactly why, if you ever get to wander around the Ferrari museum in Maranello, you can find the Ferrari 637 proudly on display. It was an Indycar, penned by Gustav Brunner, that got as far as testing at Fiorano in 1986 but never actually raced.

New boss Marchionne has not been afraid of making bold statements at Ferrari...

The push for it came amid concerns from company founder Enzo Ferrari that F1's future engine regulations were taking the sport in a direction he didn't favour. Has a familiar ring, doesn't it?

In fact, if you look back in recent years - the threats to create a breakaway grand prix championship (in alliance with other teams), or go racing at Le Mans, were all fuelled by unhappiness about a path F1 was taking.

But as F1's political tides have shifted in recent years, with Red Bull emerging as the dominant force and Bernie Ecclestone's closest ally, Ferrari's ability to get its own way by staging a noisy protest has diminished.

In fact, di Montezemolo's final public thump of the tub - when he hit out at F1 for 'taxi-cab racing' at last year's Bahrain Grand Prix and called for urgent changes to the fuel-efficiency rules - backfired dramatically when the Sakhir race turned out to be an absolute thriller.

The Marchionne broom that has swept through Maranello has stopped such militant showmanship, and instead there are now more subtle attempts to achieve a way forward that actually works.

When, for example, Ferrari grew frustrated at Mercedes' unwillingness to accept any compromise over a potential engine 'unfreeze' last winter, did it go public and threaten to quit F1? No.

Instead, it kept its head down and privately challenged the FIA over F1's engine-homologation rules and their failure to explicitly state a date for when the 2015 power units had to be lodged.

Very rarely do teams go up against the governing body in this way and succeed, but Ferrari pulled off a masterstroke that has served to change the whole F1 engine-development platform going forward.

It's been a similar story of action rather than words in the battle to shape F1's rules revolution for 2017 too.

Talks of factory Le Mans return was just Ferrari posturing to get its own way © LAT

Rather than simply complain about what is being discussed, Ferrari has been proactive on the matter. That is why it followed automotive industry practice by producing its concept F1 car.

Team principal Maurizio Arrivabene spoke last week of the drawing being a 'provocation'.

It was a call to arms for F1 to talk about the realities of what could be achieved if it got its top brains together and came up with positive solutions, rather than bickering and worrying about short-term gains.

"Our competitors - they are cars in video games," said Arrivabene. "If you look at cars on these games, they look fantastic, well designed, and cool.

"And if you are asking a guy who is 18 years old if he prefers to play for one hour on a video game, most probably he prefers to do that than watch the grand prix. This is one of our competitors.

"We need to try to liberate the creativity and create a beautiful car. We will not say we were first or second [with the concept], or ours is better. We are happy to try to move the status quo."

Indeed, dancing around the edges of F1's rulebook - thinking that agreeing to ban drivers from changing helmet designs is the limit of progress needed - doesn't cut it anymore. Ferrari's concept car (just like its Indycar) may never make it as far as racing, but that wasn't the point. It was about pushing the debate on - being extreme but in a positive way. And fuelling discussions.

In doing that, it was a success.

Arrivabene and Marchionne are right. Proper advancement doesn't happen by simply moaning and complaining about what is happening now, or threatening to go and do something else.

Instead, progress will come only from standing up and breaking the cycle of inertia that has been crippling F1's ability to improve itself creatively.