The legendary F1 designer Rory Byrne, who is one of the major figureheads in Ferrari’s Formula One dominance during the early 2000s has returned to the Scuderia to work closely with, and as a mentor to, Ferrari’s chief designer Simone Resta.
Byrne worked as the design chief for Ferrari at the start of the 2000s and, together with Ross Brawn, Michael Schumacher and Jean Todt, helped the Scuderia win six constructors’ and five drivers’ titles in only six years.
2014 was the Ferrari’s first winless season since 1993 and triggered a massive uphill climb along with loads of changes and shuffling around within the team and its management.
The team faced no less than three team principal changes during the course of the year as well as the departures of high-profile staff members like Nick Fry, and then president Luca di Montezemolo.
In November 2014, Maurizio Arrivabene took over from Marco Mattiacci as team principal and confirmed during the second Barcelona test that the semi-retired Byrne is back at the team.
“I have to tell you something funny,” Arrivavene told the media at the test in Barcelona. “I spoke with Rory, I’ve known him for a long time. I asked him ‘are you keen to work together with us, with your success, in the future to be a bit more involved?’ Without taking anything away from Simone Resta, who is our chief designer.
“And you know, I saw in Rory a kind of light. It’s unbelievable, a guy like this of his age, and he’s still enthusiastic like a baby. I was really surprised. One night near to Christmas I went to a restaurant and I found Rory, who was eating very, very quickly, and I said ‘Rory, calm down, where do you have to run!?’ He had to run immediately back to the factory for a meeting with Resta.”
Arrivabene explained that Byrne will be working with Simone Resta as a mentor due to his extensive experience and will be working on some tricky details of the new car. He went on to explain that Byrne’s experience of winning was something invaluable to Ferrari, who have not won a title since 2008.
“Rory is working with Simone, he’s giving to Simone as a mentor because of his experience and he’s working on some detail of the car. Most people might think Rory is part of history, I don’t think so. We are talking about the chief designer guru all the time but Rory isn’t one of the guys who didn’t win, he’s one of the guys who won a lot.
“Having a father or mentor for Simone is not a bad thing especially not when his enthusiasm is going up to the sky. I was talking to James [Allison] about it and he said ‘why not?’. Rory has my utmost respect, especially for that night I saw him eating with the light inside his eyes.”
