Aston Martin chief reveals critical Ferrari advice as Lawrence Stroll comparison made

Aston Martin’s new chief technical officer has revealed some key advice he received from his former Ferrari boss, the late Sergio Marchionne.

Enrico Cardile has started work at Aston Martin, taking up the post of chief technical officer, having served as a lead technical figure at Ferrari over the past decade.

Enrico Cardile: Sergio Marchionne told me ‘don’t read’

Cardile will be working directly alongside Adrian Newey at his new team, with the duo forming a formidable technical partnership at Lawrence Stroll’s Aston Martin squad.

Having moved across from Ferrari after a lengthy period of gardening leave, Cardile had served the Scuderia across a wide range of lead technical roles, including being the chassis technical director for the very competitive SF-24. Overseeing chassis designs over the past half decade, his background as an aerodynamicist also see him play a major part in the designs of the title-challenging 2017 and ’18 cars.

While a long-time Ferrari employee, Cardile only started working in F1 in 2016, overlapping with the late Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne, who passed away in 2018.

Working at Ferrari is well-known for being a pressure cooker for employees, and this extends far beyond the drivers. With the Scuderia one of Italy’s most popular sporting teams, top-level technical staff such as Cardile can find themselves in the spotlight just as much – whether that be for good or bad reasons, depending on the performance of the car.

Having moved into F1 and discovering the weight of public expectation upon the F1 division of Ferrari, Cardile revealed that he was advised by Marchionne to avoid reading headlines and stories in the media, in order to ensure he could keep his head clear and avoid being stressed out by what was being written about him.

“Here, I can mention Marchionne, who once told me, ‘Cardile, don’t read. Don’t read them. Media, don’t read that. Forget them. Don’t read, don’t pay attention’,” Cardile told the Beyond the Grid podcast.

“At the end of the day, this is the best thing to do, the only thing you should do. I took a bit of time before applying this suggestion because, when you read, you know exactly the story. You know everything.

“When you read something, sometimes you feel very much upset. The problem, when you are the technical director, is managing the consequences of what you read on news on the internet or whatsoever, with the organisation, perhaps the people involved on some comment that is the stuff to pay attention to.

“In magnitude, definitely not. But yeah, you are recognised. Sometimes there are people who are so in love with Ferrari, with F1 in Italy, that there are many people who are knowing the main members of the team.”

Cardile’s background as an aerodynamicist saw him start work with Ferrari in 2005, working on GT programmes. It was a decade later when he got the call to visit Marchionne for a conversation, a chat that completely changed his career direction.

“It happened that, at a certain point in 2016 June or July, I was called for a chat with Sergio Marchionne,” he said.

“I didn’t even know for what reason Marchionne wanted to talk with me, and so I had this one hour conversation with him, but without exactly knowing why he asked about many different stuff.

“‘What do you think about this guy? What do you think about the other guy? What do you think about F1? Why do you think they’re not winning and stuff like this?’

“But I went out after one hour without having exactly understood the reason why, I discovered just a few days after that my future, he decided that my future would have been in F1 and from one day to another, I moved to F1.”

Having been able to work for the late Italian-Canadian businessman up until 2018, Cardile said he can see similarities between Marchionne and his new boss, Lawrence Stroll.

“Of course, there are many. There are many,” he said.

“They are very similar characters, and they are both visionary and inspiring people. They have a vision, they have actions, and they are so energetic to inspire people.”

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Marchionne was well-known for being a demanding boss, and Cardile agreed that things weren’t always straightforward during their conversations.

“He was challenging. It was definitely challenging,” he said.

“Because he used to ask for simple questions, requiring the simple answers, but after a complex process of thinking exactly what the right answer would have been.

“So, in this respect, it was extremely challenging. He was a demanding man, extremely straight and sharp. I never felt intimidated by Marchionne, but perhaps this is just me.”

While Cardile has since carved out a reputation for creating tidy and competitive chassis designs, the world of single-seater F1 cars had not been his primary focus and, having spent so long in sportscars, he believed his time to arrive in F1 had actually passed him by.

“Not really,” he replied, when asked if F1 had been his dream.

“I mean, there was my dream when I decided to study aerospace engineering. I did these studies for understanding the reason why are the shapes of an F1 car. But then I started to work on road cars, I developed my career there.

“I would have never thought that, after so many years, I would have had the opportunity to move to F1 in an important role. This has been really shocking.”

Marchionne would pass away in mid-2018, having battled serious health issues in his final year.

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