de Ferran to BAR!

[rabbit]

http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/formulaone/16075/
Last Sunday, Gil de Ferran called the Indy Racing League event as color analyst for ESPN. In a few days, the employees of the BAR-Honda Formula One team will start calling the 37-year-old Brazilian their boss.

SPEEDTV.com has learned that in the next few days de Ferran will be named sporting director of the English-based team that has failed to finish a race so far in 2005.

[Gnam]

It's a bit late for April fools.

[pfc_m_drake]

Makes perfect sense actually. de Ferran was Honda's main development driver with Walker and Penske in CART - and he's very highly thought of by the Honda people. He's a very sharp guy (he was in Engineering school prior to racing) - very technical when it comes to setting up the car, and obviously a great driver. He might be just the guy to get things going at BAR.

[JoeBob]

This is official: http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=motoringMotorSportsNews&storyID=8102353

[Wheel-Nut]

I guess he has had enough Koolaid. Listening to him this past weekend you'd of thought he had an I V in his arm.

[Steve99]

I guess he has had enough Koolaid. Listening to him this past weekend you'd of thought he had an I V in his arm.
No, IV crashed into Helio, remember? :)

[indyfan31]

What exactly does a Sporting Director do anyway? Or what's the difference between a Sporting Director and a Team Manager?

[Jervis Tetch 1]

What exactly does a Sporting Director do anyway? Or what's the difference between a Sporting Director and a Team Manager?
In Champ Car anyway a team manager has more direct contact with the team in the everyday shop operations and everything else -- testing, race set up and the race. Sometimes he makes the calls on race day.

A perfect example of this was Gerald Davis when he was at Pennzoil Hall Racing.

I believe the Sporting Director is more with the business end of the sport. In other words, he's the one in the direct line of fire should things go wrong. Like Rahole was and like Niki Lauda when he was at Ferrari.

[oddlycalm]

What exactly does a Sporting Director do anyway? Or what's the difference between a Sporting Director and a Team Manager?
Honda-powered BAR said on Wednesday that the 37-year-old Brazilian would effectively be running the team at race weekends. Seems pretty clear. A bit surprising to pick someone with no F1 experience to run the team on race weekends at first blush. Probably won't be give long to show results.

oc

[indyfan31]

You mean like a Todt or Briattore? That doesn't make sense, he has zero experience.
There's no doubts about his technical skills, but I don't think he has the temperment (read: aggression) for the job, I hope I'm wrong.