Different Shades of Red

There must be a touch of boffin somewhere inside Chris Dyer, but presumably he leaves it behind when he changes out of his Ferrari uniform at the end of each day.

The law of stereotype dictates that race engineers are far more comfortable when surrounded by telemetry than when surrounded by people; a preference that could lead to some awkward silences in social situations.

But Dyer operates a little differently. For one thing, it's hard not to notice that when he talks about his job, he does so with an almost fan-like enthusiasm. His voice rises and falls, his eyes widen when he wants to emphasise a point, and his hands wave - a trick he may have picked up in his adopted home of Italy in lieu of the language, his skill at which he cheerfully describes as "rubbish".

And quite apart from all that, he happens to be the guy who was talking to Michael Schumacher from the pitwall for the final years of Schumacher's career, and who has now taken on the same role for Kimi Raikkonen.

Working with Kimi offers the prospect of some good times ahead - indeed, it bore fruit the very first time the Finn went racing in a Ferrari. Yet Dyer admits that it didn't take long to sense that Schumacher's departure was not just a change in driver, but a change in era.

"I didn't see Michael from the Brazilian Grand Prix last year to the launch of the new car this year," he recalled.

"I was very fortunate to have five weeks holiday at the end of the season, so I missed all of our Christmas celebrations, parties and so on. But he came to the first day of testing with the new car at Fiorano, which obviously he wasn't driving!

"That was a bit strange. It was a bit strange that I wasn't engineering the car too, because it was always Michael's job to drive the new car and it was always my job to look after the new car, and this year we both had to give the job to someone else.

"There came a time at the end of the day where he and I were on our own, and I said to him, 'does it feel a bit strange?' And he said to me, very apologetically, 'no, I don't actually feel any desire to get in the car'. Which surprised me.

"And the way that he said it, it seemed to me that maybe he was a bit surprised, like maybe he came along not knowing how he was going to feel. But he said to me, 'I'm happy to be here, I'm very happy to be involved, I'm very happy to be still a part of the team, but to be honest I haven't had any desire to get into the car'.

"And he seemed very apologetic, like he had let me down because he was supposed to come and still be all pumped. And to be honest, I was really happy. I said to him, 'That's terrific. You've made the right decision at the right time. The worst thing in the world would have been for you to come back here, look at that car and think 'I don't want to be standing here, I want to be there, I want to be driving, I want to be playing with the new toy'."

'The new toy' has now been entrusted to Raikkonen. The Finn arrived at Ferrari having amassed a lot of experience and reasonable degree of success at McLaren, but Dyer said that adapting to Kimi was still very much a plunge into the unknown.

"The first day Kimi drove the car, it was very clear for me, and for the other people who are working with him, that he is a very, very different driver," he remarked.

"Not just from Michael, but from anybody we've had. And I don't mean that Kimi doesn't talk, Kimi doesn't smile! I mean the way he drives the car is very different. Just the way he uses the car, the way he uses the steering wheel, the way he uses the throttle, the way he uses the brake, is completely different to anything we have had before.

This, Dyer says, forced him to unlearn some old habits.

"You get used to a certain way of working, and all of a sudden you are given something completely different," he said.

"And to be honest, the first thing for us is really to step back and let Kimi do what he wants to do. We can't react to every problem with, 'this is what Michael would have done'. You can't do that. He's not Michael, he's different. Not just in personality, I mean, the way he drives the car is very different.

"It's very much a two-way street, because not only has he had to learn the way that we work, but we have to learn the way that he works, and we have to learn how he wants to drive the car, how he needs the car, and what we have to do to make him fast. So that has been a continual process.

"We had to adapt the car to him, which I think is a very important first step. We have to make him comfortable, and we have to make him happy, and then perhaps in the future if there are particular problems that we need to deal with, maybe then we can start to introduce more of our philosophy and our way of working."

The Ferrari team that arrived in Melbourne back in March was very different to the one that flew home from Brazil at the end of 2006. Michael is gone, of course, but so are a number of other people who shaped the team's recent history. Engine man Paolo Martinelli left to take on a role within Fiat, with Gilles Simon stepping up to the plate in his absence. And technical director Ross Brawn has swapped his perch on pitwall for a beach towel and a colourful drink with a miniature umbrella sticking out of it.

Succession plans would have been hammered out in the halls at Maranello long ago, but even so, transition takes time. Dyer admits that he thinks that the changes have left the team vulnerable, at least in the short-term.

"There's no question, at the moment, we are not as strong as we were," he said. "We have new people, and I hope that through the year those people can grow, that Kimi can grow, and that the other people in the team can grow to fill the vacant shoes. But I think it would very naive and stupid of me to sit here and say 'Michael's gone, Ross is gone, but we've got good people in there and we're just as strong'.

"I think there is no question that we went to Melbourne less strong than if we'd gone to Melbourne with Ross sitting on the pitwall. And I think that the people that have taken on Ross's roles and responsibilities would agree as well. I don't think that anybody is under the illusion that we haven't lost important people, and that we haven't got a lot of work ahead."

More work ahead? No doubt Dyer means it. But if what we've seen in the first part of the year was a weakened Ferrari, then the rest of the field must be dreading the day when Maranello gets its act together.

SIDEBAR

There was a time, not so long ago, when Ferrari won with such numbing regularity that it became hard to tell when one season had ended and the next had begun.

Michael Schumacher and Chris Dyer on the podium in the 2006 Chinese Grand Prix © XPB/LAT

Theories for the team's run of success abounded, but according to Dyer, the secret was no more complicated than refusing to rest on their laurels.

"I tell you - and I think this is one of the strengths of the team that we had - nobody ever got complacent," he emphasised.

"It didn't matter how many races we'd won. Every week was new. There was never, in all the time I was there, and in all the races we won, and in all the championships we won, there was never, ever one moment of complacency. And I'm sure that's why we managed to stay on a high.

"I think back to the number of consecutive podium finishes that we managed. I don't know what the tally was in the end, but I remember it was 40, 50 podium finishes. It was just unbelievable. But nobody ever relaxed. Nobody ever slowed down.

"I'm sure that was one of the strengths of the team, and that came from Michael, and from Ross, and from Jean [Todt], and [Luca di] Montezemolo. Those guys never let anybody relax. I think that was the big secret behind such a long winning streak really; never taking it for granted.

"Before he was running Fiat, Montezemolo was at every race. And the message was the same: This will not last. You have to keep working, because it's not going to last. It will stop. It will end. You have to work as hard as you can to make it keep going. And I think that's why we managed to keep it going for as long as we did."

SIDEBAR

Q: What were your thoughts on the way that he drove his final race?

Chris Dyer: We had the problem in qualifying, which meant that the race was always going to be difficult, which meant that the constructors' championship was going to be difficult.

So in one sense it was very, very disappointing that, after the year that we had, that we hadn't taken the constructors' championship. But putting that aside, for Michael personally, it was in some ways the perfect race. I'm very sure that if we hadn't had the problem in qualifying, that he would have been on pole, and that it would have been a flag-to-flag victory. The car was just fantastic that weekend.

Michael Schumacher (Ferrari 248 F1) 2006 Grand Prix of Brazil © XPB/LAT

If we hadn't had the problem in qualifying it would have been a flag-to-flag victory for Michael, it would have been a 1-2 for Ferrari, which would have been the constructors' championship, in the end. But at the end of the day, it would have added nothing to the Michael Schumacher story.

I mean, it was so much of a focus for everybody. Once we understood that Michael was going to finish, we wanted to be able to give him another drivers' championship to say goodbye. It wasn't about Ferrari winning, it wasn't about adding something else to the record books, it was really about us and the team wanting to give something back to Michael.

He had done so much for Ferrari over the years, and he'd done so much for all of us, that it just became a burning desire to give that to him as a farewell present. And it didn't happen, and the constructors' championship didn't happen, but at the end of the day, the way the race happened, in some ways could not have been better. I don't think we could have written a script that really added more to Michael's story than what happened. And in that way, it was a really fantastic race.

I mean, to think that Michael's last overtaking manoeuvre in Formula 1 was to hammer Kimi for three, for laps, whatever it was, and then to pass Kimi, and then chequered flag, career over ... here was a guy whose last act in Formula 1 was to overtake the guy who is taking his job! Um ... I have to be a bit careful here! [laughs]

At the end of the day, championships are great and all of that, but that race was something special. A pole position and a flag-to-flag victory .., it would have been nothing, in a way. I don't think it would have added to the story. Everybody went away from that race thinking, 'God, why is he retiring?'. Here is a guy who is obviously still at the top.

At the end of the day, we let him down a bit. We had an engine fail in Japan, we had a fuel pump fail in Brazil ... OK, Brazil was no more important in terms of the championship than Monaco, but we didn't work to the standard that we were used to working to, and we let him down. And that's disappointing. But we went down swinging.

Q: Michael doesn't seem like the sort of guy who would have lain in bed on that Sunday night thinking 'if only ...'

CD: Actually, I'm not sure he went to bed on the Sunday night! But I think that is also something that ... I'm sure that if that was his first championship fight and he lost it that way, he would have coped with it an awful lot differently than he did. But at the end of the day he had seven, and he missed an eighth by that much. You can't be unhappy with that.