Maranello (Italy): Ferrari's long-serving race strategy engineer Ravin Jain has taken over from Spaniard Inaki Rueda as the head of strategy of the iconic car-maker's F1 team.
Jain will begin the high-pressure job at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix next weekend. Reports say the Ferrari F1 team management decided to promote Jain following quite a few high-profile errors last season.
Ferrari did well last season with Charles Leclerc finishing second behind title winner Max Verstappen of Red Bull. Their other driver George Russell was fourth.
Some of the questionable calls made last year included a bad pit strategy during the Monaco Grand Prix which cost Leclerc a potential win, while at the Brazilian Grand Prix, he was the only driver on intermediate tyres for the start of Qualification 3.
In the backdrop of the two questionable decisions, Ferrari's new team principal Fred Vasseur, who took over from Mattia Binotto, decided to ease out Rueda from the role and make the Oxford-graduate Indian with a first-class degree in physics, the head of strategy.
Jain joined Scuderia Ferrari in 2017 and, over the last six years, rose to the post of Race Strategy Engineer. Rueda will continue to be a part of the team with a factory-based sporting role at Ferrari's headquarters in Maranello.
Early this year Vasseur had indicated he would make changes in Ferrari's strategy team, saying he was in the "process of reviewing everything". "We are in the process to review everything. It's a bit short notice for me, but we'll have to do some improvement," Vasseur had said in January this year.
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