Ferrari back on track

Todt and Schumacher are crucial to Ferrari's revival

By BBC Sport Online's Andrew Benson

Michael Schumacher's processional victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix not only clinched a second successive drivers title for the German, but also secured Ferrari's third consecutive constructors' title.

After a lengthy period of underachievement, the wealthiest and most famous team in Formula One now seem set for a sustained spell of success.

Technical director Ross Brawn summed up the new confidence in the team in the immediate aftermath of their latest success.

He said: "The car has been reliable and the drivers superb. You can always improve - but I don't know how at the moment."

But prior to Schumacher's world title success last year, the team's fame had been won by reputation and legend over achievement

It had been 21 years since Ferrari won the Formula One drivers' title.

The early 1990s were disastrous for Ferrari

Those two decades have been a story of the most shocking waste of money, talent and resources, as British-based teams with a fraction of Ferrari's wealth embarrassed the only outfit still competing to have raced in the first year of the world championship, 1950.

Even by the time of their heyday in the 1970s, Ferrari had failed more than they ought to have done, but it is in the years since 1979 that it has really fallen short.

It was the advent of aerodynamics into F1 that proved Ferrari's undoing.

They trailed behind the British teams in the late 1970s, and did not catch up until 1982, by which time they had employed an Englishman, Harvey Postlethwaite, as chief designer.

Killed

They would have won the championship that year had not crashes killed Gilles Villeneuve, their leading driver, and dealt career-ending leg injuries to Didier Pironi, Villeneuve's successor as team leader.

The rest of the '80s were a story of technical underachievement, only relieved in 1990, when Alain Prost took five victories in a car designed by another Englishman, John Barnard, to within an ace of the championship.

At that time, with two years still to go on Prost's contract, Ferrari appeared poised on the brink of a golden age to rival that of the 1970s, when Niki Lauda won two world titles in 1975 and 1977 and Jody Scheckter another - the last until last year - in 1979.

Instead, Ferrari rested on their laurels, failed to win a race in 1991, sacked Prost for telling the truth - that the car was dreadful - and plunged into a dark age from which for a while it appeared it might never emerge.

Montezemolo was the spark for the Ferrari revival

But at their lowest ebb, Ferrari's owner Fiat made a decision that was to lead eventually to the success of this year. They appointed Luca Montezemolo as Ferrari's president.

Montezemolo is the man who masterminded the Lauda years. A protégé of Gianni Agnelli, Fiat's patriarch, he was identified as the man who had the passion and vision to bring success back to the marque.

Slowly, it began to come right. Montezemolo appointed Jean Todt, a renowned motorsport organiser, as sporting director in 1993, and some semblance of order began slowly to return to the team.

Masterstroke

But the real masterstroke was Agnelli's attraction of Schumacher.

It put pressure on Ferrari - Agnelli said if his team did not win with the best driver in the world, they could blame no one but themselves - but it gave the extra ingredient they needed.

With the German came the key people from the Benetton team with which the German won the 1994 and 1995 world titles. Their English technical director Brawn, South African chief designer Rory Byrne and electronics expert Tad Czapsky.

Brawn and Byrne have turned the technical side of the team around until it runs like a well-oiled machine - like the best English teams, in fact.

And Brawn is hailed as a tactical genius. But the real motivating force for the revival has been Schumacher.

Brawn and brains: Ross briefs Schumacher

Without him, the others might never have come to Ferrari, even though their wages are stratospheric.

Without his unrelenting genius in the car, many of the strategies that Brawn has been able to pull out of the bag would never have worked.

And unlike last year, when the future of key behind the scenes figures was clouded in doubt, there is nothing on the horizon to suggest an end to Ferrari's dominance.

With Schumacher at the wheel for another three seasons and the design team of Brawn, Rory Byrne and Paolo Martinelli also in place until the end of 2004, Ferrari look set for a long spell at the top.