Marchionne plays down loss of engineers

Feb.22 - Sergio Marchionne has played down some high-profile personnel losses at Ferrari.

Ferrari took a step back in 2016 and some believe the fabled Italian team is now handicapped by some of its inefficient practices of the past.

President Marchionne, however, is more upbeat, even though he is refusing to set public goals for 2017 after "looking silly" in that area last year.

"Since August, our way of working has changed," the Italian-Canadian is quoted by Germany's Auto Bild.

"We are now investing our money and resources in the right areas. It's true that we've lost a few engineers we did not want to lose, but that's going to happen in every team."

Marchionne is almost certainly referring to James Allison, who has returned to the UK following the sudden death of his wife, and also aerodynamics chief Dirk de Beer, who has switched to Williams.

But Marchionne said Ferrari was not tempted to try to replace Allison with someone like Mercedes' Paddy Lowe, who has also now moved to Williams.

"We are well enough equipped to not require a superhero to solve all of our problems," he said.

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