Loic Serra, the ‘top guy’ for Ferrari’s revival
When, in 2024, Frederic Vasseur spoke of a “top guy” referring to the arrival of new personnel of particularly high level, he was more or less explicitly indicating him, Loic Serra. The former Mercedes engineer expert in suspensions and tires then found himself also taking over from Enrico Cardile the role of technical director of the Maranello team. And it is precisely with the SF-26, which is doing so well at least if we exclude the deficient power unit component, that a whole cycle is completed with the Frenchman leading the chassis and aerodynamic part of the Scuderia. However, beware of attributing him more credit than due…
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The importance of updates
In a long interview granted to Alessandro Gargantini in the latest edition of the weekly Autosprint on newsstands, Loic Serra actually keeps a low profile: “Rating this Ferrari? We can only give it at the end of the season. We are halfway through the championship and it is really too early to draw conclusions. What I am satisfied with is the dynamic within the team because we have seen since the beginning of the year that teams progress in steps, bringing their updates in phases, and this process is not synchronized. When a car brings developments, it usually takes a step forward compared to direct competitors. So, whoever is ahead today takes a step back as soon as others update their car. For this reason, I think only at the end of the championship will we have a reference and be able to give ourselves a rating. In F1, those who are not focused on tomorrow are inevitably destined to succumb”.
To complete the reasoning, Serra explains how the goodness of updates is therefore also relative to the work of rivals: “We brought two big packages (in Miami and Barcelona, ed) and both worked as we expected. When we update the car we expect a certain contribution in terms of performance, but if other teams do the same, from the outside the perceived effect is zero. The impact of a package is always relative to what others do. When we brought the second upgrade, probably the other teams did not develop as much simultaneously. It is the progression of developments that counts. In Barcelona we did well, but in Austria it was not the same because meanwhile others also improved”.
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Serra keeps a low profile
“This car – adds the technical director of the Prancing Horse – I don’t consider it mine. It is rather the result of the work of a great team made up of many professionals. Clearly, it is the car on which I have dedicated the most energy since I have been in Maranello, also because it is completely new, it opens a new regulatory phase, for which we had to start from a blank sheet. It is not like developing a concept from one year to the next, but it was, in every respect, a project started from scratch. It is a sheet in continuous evolution, subject to continuous developments. Am I satisfied with this Ferrari? We can never be completely happy, we must always try to go beyond, to push ourselves further”.
