| ATLAS F1 Volume 6, Issue 41 | |||
| Jean Todt:The View from the Top | |||
| by Roger Horton, England | |||
 Standing at the top of the podium, Jean Todt must have felt his seven-year journey, often winding and hard, had finally come to an end. But if that journey came to an end, what happens from here on? Roger Horton looks at Ferrari's journey in the past, and into the future
It was for this moment that the little 54-year-old Frenchman, who joined the team back in mid 1993, had worked and schemed towards for so long. Now, Michael Schumacher, the newly crowned World Champion, stood alongside him, as the German and Italian national anthems were played, and he could at last bask in the adoration and appreciation of the grateful Tifosi.
Even in this race, victory had looked uncertain for much of the time, as Mika Hakkinen managed to keep his McLaren tantalizingly out of reach until that critical second pit stop. But, once again, like so often before, the Ross Brawn magic worked, and it was to end up Ferrari's day.
Few can now begrudge Todt's joy in his moment of victory. He, more than any other single person, has been at the centre of Ferrari's revival from the times when its very existence - at least in its current form - was in some doubt. At the end of the '93 season, Ferrari were a distant fourth in the constructors' standings, a massive 140 points behind the dominant Williams-Renault team, and even team insiders were suggesting that the only way for the team to win, was to move - lock, stock, and barrel - to England, the home of F1 technology.
Instead, Todt, backed all the way by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, brought the English know how back to Maranello and made it work there, thereby retaining the 'soul' of Ferrari in Italy. Ferrari will never be 'just another team'. They are a team around which so many legends are entwined. If McLaren and Williams can claim to have brought the cold hard logic of rational management to the business of winning Grand Prix motor races, then Ferrari can claim to have now matched them and yet still retained the passion for which the team is so famous.
Todt's plan was always essentially two pronged. Firstly, he wanted to hire the best driver and then build his whole team around him. When Schumacher became disenchanted with life at Benetton, Todt signed him as his number one driver, with a promise that he would partake in the decision making of the team. Todt's commitment to this policy has been rock solid despite the criticism he had suffered, as year after year their goal was denied them at the last hurdle.
It was in 1997 that Todt's resolve was most tested, as Schumacher brought about a storm of criticism, after deliberately colliding with the Williams of Jacques Villenueve in an attempt to deny his rival a possible victory. Again, in 1998, he and the entire Ferrari team were denied the title once again at the last hurdle, and some said that Schumacher had cracked under the pressure, when he stalled his car on the grid at the last race of the season.
Almost certainly, the Ferrari of the pre-Todt days would have been torn apart by the media, and the politics that has surrounded the team for so long. But, the Frenchman's support for his number one driver never wavered, and this year, armed undoubtedly with the best car Ferrari have produced in a decade, Schumacher has romped to the drivers' title in some style.
Once Todt had secured his new driver, he set about rebuilding the team's technical base. He had inherited the rather clumsy arrangement that the cars were designed in the UK, as the team's designer, John Barnard, refused to relocate to Italy. This arrangement lasted until the end of the 1996 season, when Barnard departed and Schumacher's old partners at Benetton, designer Rory Byrne and technical director Ross Brawn, joined Ferrari. Crucially, it meant that now all the design and R&D work would be done in-house, in Italy.
Last year's F399, only the second car actually produced by the current design team, might well have been good enough to take Schumacher to that first elusive title had his season not been interrupted by his Silverstone crash and injury. It was then that Todt's policy of building his team around Schumacher came under yet more fire. For so long the teams that were doing the winning treated their drivers as just employees, important employees no doubt, but their job was to drive the cars and essentially do as they were told.
Yet Jean Todt stuck to his decision to maintain Schumacher as a virtual partner, consulting him about every important decision, teammates included. So tight knit did the team become that the phrase, 'win together - lose together' - so often mouthed up and down the pit-lane - really did mean something at Ferrari. In the end they defied their critics and produced the results that counted. Perhaps only in their private thoughts did Schumacher, Brawn and Todt contemplate just how much longer they could have gone on together, if they had suffered the pain of defeat one more time.
Now, though, another challenge is waiting for the Ferrari management: just how to keep this hugely talented group of people together. How many others will share the obvious sentiments expressed by Ross Brawn just moments after Schumacher crossed the finishing line: "We've had four really tough years at Ferrari, and this hard-fought victory is a dream come true. When I came to Ferrari, this was my ambition, and to achieve this championship title is the end to that ambition at last."
All Michael Schumacher's three world titles and most of his races have been won with the calm voice of Ross Brawn in his ears. Equally important, though, to the overall success of Ferrari in recent years, has been the close relationship between Brawn and designer Byrne, as he recently related: "Rory and I have worked together for some eight years now, and our philosophies are joined. We work together so closely now that his philosophy is my philosophy and vice versa."
Because of this long relationship they are able to agree on the major design parameters the car should have, and they have also mastered to art of designing a car that Schumacher is happy with, and a happy driver is a fast driver. If Rory Byrne returns to retirement in Thailand, and Brawn is lured back to the green pastures of England, then Todt would be hard pressed to replace them.
But for now, Jean Todt and the rest of his Ferrari team can rejoice in mission accomplished. The entire team has been part of a great adventure, the sheer romance and drama of which may never be repeated. The view from the top of the podium at Suzuka might well have been a worthwhile reward for all the effort and heartache, but this is Formula One, and the pleasures of victory are fleeting.
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| Roger Horton | © 2000 Kaizar.Com, Incorporated. |
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