“Certainly there’s huge passion among the people here. The Italian culture is one of passion and emotion, and that’s a great strength at Ferrari … I hope it’s mixed with a little bit of Anglo-Saxon pragmatism.”In the rising heat of an Italian summer, in the northern town of Maranello that headquarters the Formula One team Scuderia Ferrari, Ross Brawn and his strategists are quietly plotting another command performance for drivers Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello in the upcoming British Grand Prix.
The technical director doesn’t know it but the dominant Ferrari team will come in first and second at Silverstone, giving Schumacher his 60th Grand Prix win. In difficult conditions, Schumacher, one of the greatest drivers Formula One has seen, will again praise the tactical race-time decision-making of Englishman Brawn. “The decision on tyre strategy was difficult,” Schumacher told reporters after continuing his apparently unstoppable run in 2002 (then seven wins out of 10 championship starts). “I didn’t know what to do, so it was great Ross got it right.”
Critics and team members alike attribute much of the credit for the turnaround and now pre-eminent success at Ferrari to the quietly spoken Brawn. He’s a respected strategic thinker who makes the final call on race tactics from the pit wall and is widely regarded as a calm voice of Anglo-Saxon reason for the historically turbulent team.
Today, as the temperature rises towards 30 degrees Celsius in Maranello, Brawn is cool, every bit the laid-back gent from England. His distant, pale-grey eyes look a step removed from the harsh edge of reality, and in the build-up to another race he is speaking slowly, calmly, reflectively. “I’ve done this a few times before,” he says, grinning.
Is he really the calm voice that has brought reason to team Ferrari?
“I do hope I’ve had an influence; it’s my way of working. You have to work quietly and precisely with people. The way I see it, if those at the top are losing their heads, how can you expect the boys below to maintain control? But I must say, when I arrived here, I found the reputation for chaos and political machination unjustified.”
Critical observers are less circumspect. The Grand Prix editor at the influential motor-racing magazine, Autosport, Jonathan Noble, rates Brawn as instrumental to Ferrari’s success and makes no concessions about the state of play before Brawn entered.
“Brawn has helped transformed Ferrari from what was a dishevelled and political organisation back in the early ’90s into the slick and highly organised unit that it is now,” says Noble. “They have a highly rated system, and Brawn’s a key figure – he’s level-headed, politically astute and knows how to organise and run things smoothly.”
Certainly something was awry when Brawn arrived from Benetton with chief designer Rory Byrne in late 1996, a season after Schumacher arrived from the same team. The famously passionate and relentlessly demanding Ferrari fans, the tifosi, had not tasted victory for 17 years, not since 1979. And they wouldn’t for another four years.
But six years on, after some indescribably dominant performances, Ferrari has four drivers’ championships and four constructors’ championships – and the blazing red and yellow colours of the tifosi can regularly be seen dancing in the streets again.
Asked what the climate at Ferrari is like now and whether there is an underlying philosophy behind the success, Brawn first says that there’s nothing “written on the wall.” But he then talks of progress through stability. “That’s crucial. We work hard to keep our people. If you generate stability, it is an absolute foundation for success.”
Stability, hard work and preparation are key themes Brawn will repeat. (“We don’t believe in luck, luck is preparation waiting for an opportunity.”) But it requires more than stability, hard work and preparation to deliver the results Ferrari has achieved.
Ferrari’s Schumacher won the driver’s championship in 2000 and 2001 and – in the least number of races ever – took the title again in 2002. The team picked up the constructor’s title for best car in 1999, 2000 and 2001.
And by the time this issue of Evolution magazine was finalised, they had taken the title for 2002 as well.
The X-factor beyond stability that may have tipped the balance at Ferrari from success to dominance is race strategy, which is led by Brawn. Says leading Formula One commentator Mark Hughes: “He’s fantastic, the best in the pit lane without a doubt. His calls win races Ferrari shouldn’t have won. He alters strategy mid-race in clever ways that baffle the opposition. Sometimes he’s made to look better than he is because of Michael’s speed and adaptability, but he’s sharp.”
Brawn seems determined to tighten every nut on every wheel, to leave nothing untouched in the continuing push to be the ultimate Formula One team. Yet he will not, himself, claim direct credit for the recent extraordinary results.
“At the time I got here, it was, I think, the start of an era. We have built our success and that’s down to people. It started with [Luca Cordero di] Montezemolo, our president. He took on Jean Todt [team general director] who got the best driver in the world, and when things still didn’t gel, he got the best team around that driver.”
Brawn, of course, is hugely qualified to do his job. He worked with the Williams team from 1978 until 1984 in R&D. He was chief aerodynamicist at Force Grand Prix in 1985 and 1986. In 1987 he moved into the technical director’s chair for the first time at Arrows. Then, when he moved to TWR-Jaguar in 1990, the real success began.
The team won the world sports car championship in 1991. At Benetton from 1992 to 1996, the team picked up the 1994 and 1995 Formula One driver’s championships and the 1995 constructor’s title, with Schumacher at the wheel. And then the move to Ferrari, a team desperate to win and appease the long-suffering tifosi.
“The thing that staggered me when I joined Ferrari, and what was so different about working with other teams, was the tifosi. There are millions of them around the world. That is a great joy. They can be tough, but when you win, you will be offered rewards no other team can offer. They embody the passion of Italy and Ferrari.”

But for every high there is a low, and Brawn says his darkest hour came back in 1994, on a black weekend in May when Formula One legend, Ayrton Senna, crashed his car at the Grand prix at Imola, Italy, and was killed. Just the day before, on the same track, the Austrian, Roland Ratzenberger, also tragically died in a crash.
“Personally, it was a dreadful weekend. On the same day Senna died, a man I had immense respect for, my father-in-law died too. He had given me terrific support. My wife knew I was having a tough time and kept the news from me. It was ghastly.”
The intensity of Formula One is unrelenting: man and machine operating at the fringe of known limits. “You move on, but the pressure is always there.”
And the pressure is never more intense than during race time when sometimes spur-of-the-moment decisions must be made. Such finely judged calls can make or break a season, earn the praise or disdain of both the media and fans, even cost careers – and it is Brawn who has been given the responsibility of making those calls.
“I firmly believe you have to have one person making the final decisions,” Brawn says. “Committee decisions there are a recipe for disaster. For sure I’ve got it wrong many times but I think there’s a percentage where you keep your job. I reckon you’ve got to get about 80 to 90 percent right or it’s time to let somebody else do it.”
On the basis of Ferrari’s current glittering success, it would be a foolhardy punter who put money on Ross Brawn, technical director, a calm voice of Anglo-Saxon reason and a philosopher king of Formula One, being asked to step down any time soon.

David Passey
Appelberg journalist and co-editor of Evolution magazine
photos Antonello Nusca and Ferrari